Road Trip
by draxal
Summary: After a year and half of werewolves and serial killers and dark druids, Scott and Stiles deserve a little break. But what was supposed to be a road trip during winter break, turns into a nightmarish race for survival.
1. Chapter 1

1

"Okay, so this is what I'm thinking. " Stiles pounced on Scott between chemistry and American Lit, his eyes flashing with a fevered glint of inspiration. "We've got two weeks for winter break, right? I say this year we throw tradition to the winds and go wild. "

Scott stuffed his chemistry book inside his locker and withdrew the lamentably thick American Lit one. He tossed Stiles a look.

"Go wild?"

"Yeah. Road trip. You and me, leaving all our troubles behind, heading up north - - no werewolves, no supernatural craziness, no girl drama - - just two weeks of road trip awesomeness with a special candy filled treat at the end. Or the middle - - yeah, the middle."

Scott kept staring, trying to absorb that rush of explanation. "What are you talking about?"

Stiles pulled a rumpled flyer out of his back pocket, presenting it with a grin. "Alien Autopsy. They're playing in Saratoga. In a club. Where we can get like up close and personal. It's gonna rock."

He finished on a high note, shaking the flyer in Scott's face on the off chance that he hadn't taken note of it before. He did like the band. He wasn't entirely adverse to the notion of putting Beacon Hills behind him for a pace or two - - there were things in this town, places he couldn't pass by now without triggering something dark and shivery inside him. But there were people here who depended on him. The feeling of responsibility he couldn't quite shake.

"I can't leave my mom alone on Christmas. I can't just - - leave."

"Dude, you mom works holiday shifts. When's the last Christmas day she was home? When you were like fourteen? And you _can_ just leave. It's easier than you think. You pack a bag, get in the Jeep and snap, we're on the road before you know it."

He caught Scott's arm and hauled him away from the bank of lockers. "Listen, I know you've got this whole 'Savior' complex thing going - -"

"I do not."

"- - And I can understand how you got it, all things considered. Sociopathic mass murderers, werewolf wars, dark druids. But, dude, you have got to let it go."

They filed into American Lit behind a gaggle of other juniors, which from necessity, stopped Stiles' listing of the supernatural events that had plagued Beacon Hills for the last year and half. His eye was drawn to Allison, as it always was upon entering a room she happened to occupy. She was near the back, sitting across from Isaac, the two of them laughing over something he was showing her on his phone.

She looked happy, her fingers lightly resting on Isaac's, holding the phone steady, her smile this miraculous, radiant thing. And it always hit him, before he choked it back and locked it down, the incomprehensible notion that it wasn't the same smile she turned his way anymore. That when she smiled at him, there was always a little something guarded in it, as if she were afraid he'd take it the wrong way. As if she were afraid of getting too close. It never failed to feel like a knife in the gut. A fresh wound each and every time.

Stiles called him an idiot for not letting himself just get over her. But Stiles was a hypocrite, all things considered. Case in point, Lydia and all Lydia's varied conquests, none of which included Stiles. And if Stiles possessed some secret on how to stop loving a person once he'd been snared - he'd never shared it. And Scott didn't know how. He didn't know how to shut off the feelings and look at her not feel like he was drowning when he didn't see the things in her eyes that he once had. He didn't know how not to occasionally want to smash Isaac's head up against the wall when he was leaning in close to Allison, sharing some intimate secret.

And he hated that feeling. He didn't want to be that person consumed by jealousy. Isaac was a friend. Isaac was pack. He'd go to the mat for Isaac if he had to, so the fleeting urges to sink his teeth into his throat when he was too close to Allison were disturbing.

She looked up, catching his eye, and her laughter died, her smile turning wistful, like he was something old and familiar that she remembered fondly. He hated it.

He dropped his book bag on the floor and slumped into the desk.

"My dad's okay with it," Stiles was still on his fantasy road trip. "I've got a garage full of camping gear. I've got a route all mapped out. I just need you to remember you're seventeen and not thirty and attempt to have a little fun."

Scott narrowed his eyes, fighting the urge to listen in on Allison and Isaac. He would not. Absolutely would not.

"You're okay leaving your dad alone on the holidays?" He tried to prick Stiles with a little of the guilt he was feeling at the notion.

Stiles scoffed. "Here's an idea. Your mom and my dad could keep each other company. Problem solved."

"Right." Scott rolled his eyes.

"Damned right, right." Stiles paused, mulling that over. "Actually, that could work."

"Dude, you're not setting up my mom with your dad."

"What's wrong with my dad?"

"Nothing. Its just - - its my mom."

"What? Has she sworn off sex?"

"Oh my God. Do not go there." He felt vaguely appalled at the notion.

The conversation was mercifully cut short when the ancient American lit teacher ambled into class and painstakingly began scratching out the day's assignment on the chalkboard.

Stiles spent the rest of the day badgering him about the road trip and Scott spent the day coming up with reasons why he couldn't afford to go. It was busy at work and Deaton needed him. He didn't have the money saved up. His mom would be alone in the house for two weeks and God knew where Ducalean had gotten off too. Not to mention the other various psyche-scarring things that occasionally crept into Beacon Hills. Derek had been gone two months, without so much as a phone call or a text, which meant Scott was responsible for the few remaining wolves in Beacon Hills.

And there was Allison - - who damned well could take care for herself - -who didn't need him or want him at all anymore - - who he couldn't shake from his heart. And something inside him, some ridiculous desperate thing was holding onto the notion that if he was here to remind her of what they had - - maybe she wouldn't take that next step with Isaac. Maybe the pheromones he couldn't help but scent sharp and poignant in the air around them when they stood close together, were nothing more than teenaged metabolisms at work.

"You suck," Stiles complained after that last bell when they were heading with the rest of the migratory herd of students outside of the hallowed halls of Beacon Hills high, free for two whole weeks of winter break. "You suck balls. You are a sucky friend."

"Dude, I've got responsibilities."

"You've got a complex." Stiles jabbed a finger at him. "And you are seriously messed up about Allison. Don't think I didn't see that look on your face - - the one you get every time you see her and Isaac cozying up."

"I don't get a look. We're not together. She can cozy up to whoever she wants to."

"Right. And sure you don't. And you don't have claws and glowy eyes when the mood strikes. Scott, we deserve this. After the year we've had. We deserve this. But if you want to be an old lady about it - - _fine_."

That 'fine' was punctuated by a huff and an evil eye, before Stiles stomped off to his battered old Jeep.

We're not together. He'd been telling himself that at least a half dozen times a day since the school year had started. Before that, when she'd been in Paris - - well he'd had a little hope. It had just been a break. She'd needed that time to heal. To put herself back together. He'd thought - - he'd really thought, she'd come back and things might be right again. But she wasn't the same Allison that had left. Things had been irrevocably altered. She was changed and for the better, he thought. He supposed he wasn't the same either - - none of them were - - death and blood changed a person - - stained souls.

Get over it. Just get over it and do what you have to do. His motto of late, when the nightmares woke him up sometimes and he couldn't shake the feeling of the world closing in. But that didn't happen that often. Just now and then when he wasn't expecting it. And he wasn't alone. Sometimes he'd see it in Stiles' eyes, that flash of being lost in something dark and overwhelming, before Stiles' would shake it off and pretend nothing was wrong. He wanted to ask Allison if she felt it too, but it was such an intimate thing to inquire and he didn't know how to initiate intimacy with her now.

He could talk about it just fine with Stiles - - sharing insecurities had never been a problem with them. They were both pretty riddled with them. A road trip didn't sound like a terrible idea. Deaton probably wouldn't miss him at all at work. His mom would understand. And Stiles was right, they did sort of deserve it.

He sat on his dirt bike, second-guessing himself. Arguing with his arguments. He caught her scent on the breeze. Looked up to see her and Isaac on the steps outside the school doors, stalled in the open doorway, alone in the stairs, the rest of the students gratefully fled. Isaac bent, as if he were sharing some quiet word, but she stepped into the whisper, her hands sliding around his neck, her body melding against his, his blonde head against her dark.

Scott couldn't breathe. He'd thought - he'd thought they'd been playing at some sort of tenuous flirtation - - but this - - this wasn't some hesitant first kiss. This was her wrapping her arms around his neck, him pressing her back against the door, no uncertainty, no hesitation - - one step away from finding a dark place with a horizontal surface where they could lose their clothes and their minds in private.

He drew in a desperate breath, gone lightheaded from the lack of inhalation. His claws were out and he didn't remember actually triggering them. He stared down as equally horrified at the primal instinct to bound up there and tear Isaac off her, as he was at the fact that they were trying to devour each other's faces in the first place. He forced the claws in, forced his gaze away from them, backed the bike a few paces from the curb before he started the engine and tore out of the parking lot.

He felt sick, his stomach churning dangerously. He stopped a few miles down, thinking if he vomited, he'd rather not do it with the wind whipping it back into his face. He sat there, leaning over the handlebars, trying to settle his stomach. Trying to get the image of them kissing out of his head and to think coherently.

Eight months. They'd been broken up eight months. He had no claim on Allison. She could do what she wanted with whomever she wanted and it was no business of his. And Isaac - - whatever loyalty Isaac owed him didn't extend to who he made out with. That was asking too much. Scott hadn't actually dated enough girls - - just the one to be exact - - to be fully familiar with the rules about things like macking on a buddy's ex. Stiles would never do it to him, but then Isaac wasn't Stiles. Isaac just lived in the spare room in his house, and had his back in the occasional fight and was supposed to be _pack_. And was maybe having sex with Allison. The urge to rip out Isaac's throat hit again, this time with the accompanying taste of blood in his mouth from where the fangs that had popped up of their own accord had sliced into his tongue.

Oh - - God - - he was going to be sick.

He threw up in the weeds on the side of the road. Wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and sat there on his bike, while traffic passed him by, regaining a hold on his composure. It was the upcoming full moon that had him popping claw and fang when a good old-fashioned clenched fist would have been more than appropriate. Two days till it crested and God - - maybe going home and having to look at Isaac and imagine what he'd been doing with Allison right now, until he got a hold of himself, wouldn't be such a stellar idea.

He spat the taste of vomit and blood out of his mouth and started the bike back up.

Stiles answered the door when he knocked and gave him an arch browed look, still pissed.

Scott stared right back. "Okay. Let's do it."


	2. Chapter 2

2

His mom wasn't particularly happy about his showing up at the hospital and begging free rein to roam the roads of northern California for two weeks, but she relented. Maybe she saw something in his eyes, some need that bordered on desperation. Maybe seventeen didn't mean the same thing anymore when you'd gone through the things he had. What was a little unsupervised road trip compared to battling homicidal reptiles and death dealing Alpha's?

She believed in him. And she said as much, looking him in the eye with that level, trusting mom gaze that implied that if he did something stupid and broke that faith he'd feel the guilt of her disappointment for ages to come. He wasn't sure if she did it on purpose, or if it was some instinctual mom tactic to guilt kids into good behavior. It had always worked really well on him.

Stiles, who'd been hovering a few paces behind, ready and willing to provide back up pleading if she'd been reluctant to agree, grinned and gave him a thumbs up. The Jeep was already packed. It had been packed before Scott had changed his mind and gone to Stile's house. Stiles had just shrugged, as if it had been a foregone conclusion that Scott would eventually come around to his way of thinking. Which, nine times out of ten, usually happened.

It got them on the road before 6 and well on their way up Interstate 5. Stiles, who'd been ready to leave in the morning, didn't give Scott more than an initial curious cant of the brow when he'd suggested getting on the road that evening instead. That silent acceptance wouldn't last though. It wasn't in Stiles' nature to let curiosities go unanswered.

An hour down the road, Stiles hit him with the question. "So what happened?"

"What makes you think something happened?"

Stiles gave him a dubious look.

"I just thought, if we were going to do this - - you know, we ought to make the best time possible."

"It's not a race, dude."

Scott snorted and slouched deeper in the seat. "You know what I mean."

"No. I really don't. Tell me it doesn't have anything to do with Allison."

Scott cast Stiles an offended look and Stiles widened his eyes and jabbed a finger at him.

"Oh my God, it does."

"Watch the road."

"Spill."

The chances of avoiding telling Stiles were pretty slim in the long run, especially when he had two whole weeks to work on breaking Scott's resistance. Easier to just get it over with.

"Nothing, really - - just I saw them kissing outside school." He propped a foot on the dash and stared at the lights in the side view mirror.

"What kind of kissing? Like friends exchanging a little peck, or like just a little lip nibbling, or were like they trying to swallow each others tongues?"

Details. Stiles was always about the details. Scott shut his eyes and wished he didn't recall it quite so vividly. "God. Really, Stiles? It was pretty serious, okay. There were probably tongues."

He muttered that last bit and banged his head a few times against the headrest.

"That dick," Stiles groused, and Scott cracked an eye to look at him. "I mean what the hell? That's like guy rule number one, right? Don't hit on your friend's ex. Unless you ask permission. God, he didn't ask you if he could date Allison did he and you say something like 'sure'? Because I can totally see you doing that and then regretting it and moping about it forever."

"No. And no." But then - - maybe there had been some sort of hinting around a while back. Isaac sort of casually mentioning something about Allison and a movie playing downtown and Scott had been sort of distracted at the time - - he couldn't recall with what - - and wondering why Isaac was even bothering to ask. It had been a movie - - who asked for permission to go enjoy a movie with a friend, right? And Isaac had sort of stood there, shuffling his feet, looking nervous for no reason.

_So it's cool, then? _

_Why wouldn't it be?_

Right. Now that he thought about it - - he was an idiot.

"Then he's an asshat and it's not cool." Stiles was going on with a vehemence that made Scott feel marginally better. "You should kick his ass."

"I'm not kicking his ass."

"Yeah, I know you're not. Damn Scott. I'm sorry, dude."

"Can we not talk about it? Please?"

But Stiles couldn't _not_ talk about a thing that had his ire up. Which wasn't entirely a terrible thing, since he was staunchly, irrevocably in Scott's corner and had no problem bashing lesser friends to back him up regardless of reason or fairness. Even so, by the time they stopped for the night at a state run park fifteen miles off I-5, Scott was willing to break into the bottle of Jack Daniels Stiles had filched from his dad's liquor cabinet.

As it turned out, with enough consumption of straight alcohol, werewolves could get wasted after all. He just hadn't tried hard enough the last time Stiles had tried to get him to drown his sorrows in the arms of cheap booze.

So with the pup tent up and a late dinner of hotdogs charred over a fire consumed, they sat in the darkness and commiserated over the cruel hand of fate and the thoughtless nature of women. Well, Stiles commiserated, having no head whatsoever for alcohol and the tendency to get chattier than usual when he consumed it.

Three or four shots and Stiles was riding a Jack high. It took half a bottle for Scott's enhanced metabolism to realize it was supposed to ease off a little and let the whiskey actually do its job.

"Who needs 'em," Stiles was going on, slumped against a log in front of the fire. "What's so great about having a girlfriend anyways, right, if they're just gonna stab you in the back?"

"The sex. The sex is really good." Scott had the bottle between his knees. He was feeling the weird juxtaposition of a head that felt half its normal weight and a body that seemed two times heavier. A dozen tactile memories of Allison's skin - -her mouth - - her hands - - flitted across his mind. She had really clever hands - - really creative hands. There was a little growing stiffness in his jeans just thinking about it. He groaned and took another swig of Jack.

"Sex," Stiles sighed wistfully. "I've heard about that. It's supposed to be awesome right?"

Scott canted a look at him, thinking there was the hint of something to be wary of in Stiles' tone, but the booze slowing him down enough that he wasn't sure.

"Umm - -yeah?"

"So rub it in," Stiles held out a hand for the bottle and Scott handed it over. "I'm gonna die unlaid. I feel it."

"No you're not." Scott felt offence on Stiles' behalf. "You're not gonna die - -"

"We all die. Rot in the ground. Worm food."

"Oh, God," He wasn't entirely sure how Stiles had gotten from sex to rotting corpses.

"If I died, I wonder if Lydia would suddenly realize she'd been missing out on all this?" Stiles waved the hand with the bottle, indicating his sprawled form.

"You're not dying. Stop talking about it."

They sat there, watching the wood in the fire slowly deteriorate into charred ash. Stiles drifted off, and Scott saved the bottle from tipping over by taking it from his limp fingers.

"What?" Stiles jerked back to semi-awareness at the save, blinking at the fire, then at Scott.

"Sleep?" Scott suggested, jerking his head towards the tent.

"Sure. Why not?" He got a wavery grin. "Tomorrow though - - tomorrow we're gonna pass by the biggest ant hill in California - -I'm hyped."

They hadn't quite made it into their sleeping bags before mutually passing out. Scott woke up sprawled in a tangle of polyfiber and camping gear and Stiles inside the tent, but he felt better. Lighter than he had the day before when it had seemed as if his world was crashing down upon him.

He didn't even have a hangover. Byproduct of a werewolf metabolism. Stiles was not so fortunate. He woke cranky and red eyed and complaining of a brain that wanted to explode out the back of his skull. He stumbled around camp, trying not to barf, while Scott did most of the work packing up, then slumped in the passenger seat with his jacket over his face, shutting out the daylight, while Scott drove.

It was a roadside diner/truck stop for breakfast. Stiles hunched over his coffee and stared balefully at Scott while he consumed a healthy platter of greasy diner breakfast fare.

"I hate you. And I mean that. Deep down, hate your guts."

Scott finished off a strip of bacon and grinned. Stiles glanced at his plate, turned a little green then looked away.

"You were the one that brought the booze."

"Yeah, and I expected it to last the whole trip. You're the one that went on a binge. You and your stupid werewolf metabolism."

Scott glanced up at the waitress who was in the process of trying to top off Stile's half consumed cup of coffee. She lifted a world-weary brow, probably having heard things a lot stranger than mentions of underage drinking and werewolf metabolisms.

He smiled at her anyway, his best apologetic one and tossed Stiles a 'yeah, he's a little weird, but what can I do?' look, then asked politely for the check.

It was a good day for driving. The weather was crisp, but it was warm for December this far north in the interior of the state. No rain, no snow yet, but once they reached higher elevations that might change. Which was okay with Scott. He liked the snow and the idea of spending a few days roughing it out in one of the state parks that riddled the vast unpopulated land surrounding the meandering I-5 was appealing. It had been a long time - - too long - - since he and Stiles had taken a weekend camping trip. They'd used to all the time, before he'd had a normal life ripped away from him.

By mid-afternoon, the hangover Stiles had been sporting had started to dissipate and he began to regain his interest in the world at large. There wasn't a lot to see in the stretch of highway between small towns. The giant ant farm proved not all that impressive, though Stiles took at least a dozen pictures of it to commemorate the experience. There was a lot of featureless landscape, a lot of brown, brown and more brown between splotches of green, but by the end of the day, they could see the land rising, cresting into the green mistiness of foothills.

It was raining by nightfall, the sky so overcast that the light of the full moon was weak and elusive. Scott still felt it. No matter how much control he had over the primal urges the lure of the moon drew to the surface, he never failed to _feel _it. A different sort of high than the one too much alcohol brought on. More like mainlining caffeine. A constant surge of adrenalin that heightened everything. It made everything brighter, sharper, more real. Pain, lust, jealousy, everything intensified. Everything except self-control. That tended to slip through the cracks with alarming ease if he let his mind wonder.

Derek had told him once, '_don't go into a full moon with a grudge. Take care of it before or deal with the consequences. Even old wolves, with a lifetime of experience occasionally give in to emotion when they're high on moonlight_.'

Good advice, when after all day not thinking about Allison and by extension Isaac, it came back to hit him now. It hardly mattered that the reasonable part of his brain was in the back telling him to get over it - - that she wasn't his to get jealous over anymore - - because the wolf part was surging front and center, drawing back its gums with a proprietary snarl. The fact that he was two days drive from Beacon Hills was the very best thing for everyone concerned.

"You hungry?" Stiles broke him out of his dark reverie. There were the lights of a diner ahead, the first sign of life in twenty miles. It was an isolated little collection of buildings that consisted of a few ancient gas pumps, what looked like a closed antique store and a diner or bar. There were a few big rigs parked in the gravel field next to the pumps, a few pick-ups and old cars and about a dozen motorcycles in front of the bar.

"Is this like - - a biker bar?" Stiles peered through the windshield warily.

"I dunno. It says restaurant in the window."

"Yeah, but look at all the motorcycles. I've seen Son's of Anarchy - - these places can get rough."

Scott lifted a dubious brow. "Dude, this is not a biker gang hangout. And we need gas. And I _am_ hungry."

"I'm just letting you know, I've got a bad feeling. Look," Stiles extended his forearm. "Goose pimples."

"It's cold. C'mon."

He hopped out of the Jeep and walked through the drizzle to the plank boardwalk fronting the pair of weathered storefronts. There was music playing inside, something older than both of them combined likely. A bell jingled in their wake when they walked inside, and a lot of eyes turned their way. A long bar, a few pool tables, a row of old wooden booths along a wall and several high tables scattered around the floor. The place smelled of beer and cigarette smoke and human sweat, with the undertones of fried food wafting in from the back. It was sort of like a bar out of a movie. But the people in it didn't look particularly menacing, just curious of strangers come in from a rainy evening. Most of them, the ones that looked more like they'd be caught riding the very envious collection of Harley's outside instead of driving tractor trailers were gathered around the set of pool tables.

There was an empty booth and Scott and Stiles scooted into it.

"Do you see a health department certificate anywhere? I don't see one. And this place sort of strikes me as an attack of salmonella waiting to happen. Or worse." Stiles picked up a grease stained, yellowed menu by two fingers, grimacing.

"Get something deep fried, then. It'll kill the bacteria."

"Ha. Funny."

A waitress sauntered up. Low cut tank top and tight jeans and too much makeup trying to cover up the lines on her face. She'd probably been gorgeous when she was younger and a little less worn. She still smelled like sex. It clung to her like some sort of primal perfume, like maybe she'd just come from having some in the back room.

Scott blew out a breath. _Fucking full moon. Get a grip_.

"So what's good here?" Stiles was asking, looking like he wasn't holding out much hope on a satisfactory answer.

She put a palm on the table and leaned down, giving Stiles a good solid view of her not inconsiderable cleavage. "Sweetie, everything's good here. You writing a review?"

"Uh - -" Stiles was floundering, eyes locked on her breasts. "Umm - - something deep fried?"

"Chicken fingers it is. How 'bout you, honey?"

"A burger. Rare."

She smiled at him. Then eyed him a little closer, her look turning speculative, sensing that something dangerous in him that the full moon brought out. She smiled again, a bit more inviting. He smiled back, half considering showing just a trace of fang. He was that on edge and it had been a very long time since he'd felt the moon so strongly. She shrugged and headed off to place their order.

Stiles was staring at him, eyes gone just a little narrow. "Oh my God, you're riding a full moon high, aren't you?"

Scott rolled his eyes, then considered it and shrugged. "Yeah, maybe. It's - - really strong this time."

"Yeah, well stop flirting with the biker bar waitress. Don't you watch TV? She's probably got a boyfriend or a husband over there that's gonna take offense and the last thing I need is my dad finding out I got caught up in some biker bar brawl."

"It would be sort of unfair odds."

"Yeah, they outnumber us like a lot."

"I meant for them."

"Dude," Stiles leaned forward and hissed, not amused in the least. "Don't make me take you outside."

Scott blew out a breath. Anything he did tonight, under the influence of the moon, he'd probably regret tomorrow when it wore off. So he pushed back the niggling agitation that was fueling the beast and found his center. Allison had been the initial anchor that had saved him from giving in to the wolf inside, but she'd only been the gateway to an inner wellspring of control. She'd been the trigger that had awakened him to the awareness that there was a core in him that was stronger than he might have imagined.

By the time the waitress brought them their Cokes, he had it under control. The burger wasn't half bad. Stiles complained about a suspicious fried object in with his fries. He did strike up a conversation with the waitress though, when she came to collect the bill, asking about a decent place to camp out for the night.

"There's a nice place about ten miles off I-5 down 16 where a lot of hikers camp. Called Geyser Springs. Lot of pretty trails. Can't miss it."

"Thanks."

Which put them back on the road in the dark and the rain. If there had been a motel to be had, they probably would have splurged and gotten a room for the night. The waitress was right, once they turned off onto rural route 16, the cut off to Geyser Springs was hard to miss. There was a big weathered sign, proclaiming hiking, camping, fishing and swimming. The road leading past it was narrow and tree lined, winding through dark forested wilderness like a snake. Maybe three miles in there was an unmanned booth. They obviously worked via the honor system in the nighttime hours, because there was a lockbox with a slot in it and a sign proclaiming campsite fees of twenty bucks.

Scott dug a ten out of his pocket and handed it to Stiles, who added it to one of his own and stuffed them both into the box. Then it was more twisty road, which eventually turned into gravel instead of pavement, passing a lot of forks with wooden signs proclaiming this trail or that, or this way to the springs and that way to the lake. They took the lake fork and finally came to a large body of dark water.

They chose a spot and put up the tent, stuffed their gear inside and mist or no, walked down to take in the lake. There was a clearing with a little strip of sandy beach and a pier and trail leading into the trees that seemed to circle the lake. It was quiet, save for the occasional croak of frogs and the chorus of insect life. It smelled of algae and grass and fresh forest, the rain having washed away whatever lingering scent of humans campers had left. Whether there were other campers in some other site, he didn't know, but they were the only people here, around the lake.

The clouds thinned, the mist drying up, and a hint of moonlight shone through. He felt the thrill in his blood, but with nothing here but woods and water and Stiles, it was only a twinge. They walked the trail in the darkness, talking about maybe staying the day tomorrow and checking out the Springs. Maybe doing a little fishing and catching something and cooking it over open flames. Stiles liked the idea of fending for himself in the wilderness - - quoting something from some reality show he watched about mountain men. Scott rather thought Stiles wouldn't last a week living off the land, if it came down to it, but he didn't say it out loud and burst the bubble.

It was well past midnight by the time they crawled into the tent and hastily traded jackets for the warmth of sleeping bags. Stiles zipped himself up in his and was out in literally minutes. Scott lay for a while, staring up at the faint silhouettes of tree branches through the thin nylon of the tent roof, listening to the sounds of Stiles' even breath, to the subtle whispers of the forest. There was a deer, not too far away, delicately picking its way towards the lake shore, sensing their presence perhaps, but used to the quiet of humans at night, snug within their flimsy shelters.

He shut his eyes and listened to its heartbeat. A heartbeat that quiet suddenly sped up, thudding with alarm. He'd been so focused on it for a while there that he hadn't noticed the lack of all the other sounds. The utter, deafening silence the forest had fallen into. A shiver rippled down his spine, every primal instinct he possessed screaming move - - move - - move!

"Stiles," he hissed, shaking him awake, even as he kicked off his own sleeping bag and went for the zipper on the tent.

"Wh - - whaz wrong?" Stiles slurred, still sleep clogged.

"Shhh." Scott waved a hand at him in the dark. "Something's - - wrong."

He didn't say more. He didn't know more. He just slid out the tent and moved into the darkness, trying to pinpoint the wrongness. He felt it in the air, a scent/feeling that shivered across his skin - - a looming danger.

"Scott - -?" Stiles stumbled out of the tent in his wake, arms wrapped around himself, skin so pale in the moonlight he almost glowed. An easy target. He smelled like prey. Scott's own heartbeat picked up, a shiver of fear.

"Get to the Jeep."

"What? Why?"

"Just do it. Now," he growled.

Then he heard it, the sudden crashing of bramble as something that had stalked in silence gave up the pretense and broke through the underbrush with a purpose.

He caught the barest glimpse of it as it broke through the foliage in the darkness, caught the whiff of a oddly subdued scent - - no scent he'd ever smelled - - then it was rushing them, a gleaming flash of teeth here, the banked glow of amber eyes, a huge, thick body that vacillated between running on two legs and four, the rest of it black as pitch.

He brought out the teeth and the claws, roaring a battle cry and hit it full on, trying to drive it off course while Stiles staggered backwards towards the jeep, slipping in wet leaves, exuding a panic that Scott could taste. The thing he pressed against rumbled, a deep-throated growl, tasting it too. A predator that had latched onto the scent of prey.

It rose onto two legs, muscles flexing under fur that felt like it was spun from fiberglass and flung him off. The rational part of his mind half thought it was a bear - - some huge, malformed bear - - but the other part of him - - the part that knew more terrifying things walked in the shadows - - knew it wasn't so mundane.

It was ridiculously strong. He hit the tree the thing flung him at so hard it knocked his shoulder out of alignment and the pain roared through him like a freight train, not incapacitating, but empowering. Pissing him off enough that he shifted the rest of the way and screamed in outrage. He shrugged the shoulder back into place with a jerk of his arm and rushed in low, digging his claws into the tendons where the thing's back legs bent. Hauling backwards to get it off Stile's trail and damned well onto his own.

It rounded on him, swiping with a clawed paw the size of a frying pan. And it was fast, which he wouldn't have thought, considering its size. He was faster. He ducked the swipe, claws as long as his fingers barely missing taking his face off. He sliced up with his own, shorter claws, digging through fur and trying to pierce the flesh beneath.

He heard the door slam on the Jeep, Stiles having reached its dubious safety. The engine roared to life and Stiles was screaming his name, waiting for him instead of doing the sane thing and getting the hell out of there.

Scott spared him half a glance and that was all it took for the beast to score a hit that raked him to the bone. He went down, skidding in the wet mulch, gouged from armpit to the small of his back, the burn of it making his vision go black around the edges. And it should have come after him, should have gone for the kill, but maybe there was a difference in predator and prey in its mind. Maybe he was just an obstical to overcome in order to reach the one of them that didn't have claws and fangs and didn't smell like a hunter.

"No," he screamed, pushing himself up despite the tearing pain, but the thing was already at the Jeep, barreling into it with enough force that glass shattered and metal bent, the front end spinning into surrounding trees.

There was an echoing crack and the thing jerked forward. Again and this time, a chunk of its shoulder exploded in a spray of fur and flesh and blood. It screamed, this hoarse roar of pain and whirled, eyes wild and red rimmed in the black snarl of its face. It was hit again, the gun fire coming out of the darkness, the echoes of it rebounding off trees, making it impossible to tell from where or how many people were shooting. It charged in his direction, but it wasn't aiming for him, simply for escape.

It clipped him in passing, even as another bullet tore through it. Impact struck Scott's shoulder and he staggered a step, staggered another, skidding to his knees in the leaves as what sounded like high caliber automatic weapons fire tore through the night, ripping into trees, into the wet earth, pinging off the metal of the Jeep. It was all he could do to hurl himself against the vehicle and cover his head.

Then there was silence. This perfect moment of utter, still silence where he couldn't even hear the beating of his own heart. Where nothing moved in the darkness of the woods. Nothing living.

The door he was leaning against shifted, and glass from the shattered window trickled down.

"Holy - - fucking - - shit - -" Stiles was still shoving at the door, trying to get it open.

Scott made himself move rolling a little to lean against the wheel. It sounded like Stiles had to put a little effort into getting the door open, but then the way the beast had slammed into the Jeep, the metal was dented, crumpled.

"What the hell just happened?" Stiles tumbled out, staring with wide, freaked out eyes into the darkness. "Crap - - are you okay?"

"Somebody's coming," Scott said softly, tasting residual blood at the back of his throat.

"What? Oh - - crap - - another one?"

Scott shook his head, even as figures appeared out of the darkness. Human figures hefting weaponry that would make the Argent's feel inadequate. They moved with military precision, maybe a half dozen of them. Some of them crept into the shadows of the wood, circling the place the thing had finally fallen. A few ventured into the ruined campsite clearing, the muzzles of very recently fired weapons aimed towards them.

Stiles put up his hands, edging in front of Scott, giving him that second he needed to shift back fully to human form.

The slashes in his back were healing, but the bone deep pain in his shoulder was a persistent ache that wasn't going away.

"Hey, hey, we're not bears or whatever the hell that was," Stiles was saying. "So you can put the guns down."

They didn't seem inclined to listen, until a man with a shock of white hair moved out of the shadows where the thing had fallen and into the clearing to take stock. A tall, rawboned man with a sun weathered face and scar that ran from his right ear to the corner of his mouth. He had high caliber rifle slung over his shoulder. He took in the campsite, the jeep, them.

"No, " the man agreed. "What you are, is incredibly lucky."

"Well, yeah, I'm gonna argue that point," Stiles groused, sort of testing the waters and half lowering his hands. When no one took offense and started shooting, he dropped them entirely. "Oh my God, what was that thing?"

Stiles craned his neck, taking a step in the direction the thing had fallen. Two guns came up and he froze. The white haired man held up hand.

"As you said. A bear. A rogue and a man killer."

Scott pushed himself up and leaned against the side of the Jeep. There were three pretty horrific blood stained gouges in his shirt, but the darkness camouflaged them.

"That was a lot of bullets to take out a bear." Stiles pointed out. "And don't bears hibernate in the winter."

"Hmmm. Not the crazed ones. Is that blood on your hand? Are you injured?"

There was a little blood peeking out from beneath the cuff of Scott's sleeve. Whether it was his or the thing's he wasn't sure.

"I'm okay. It just nicked me." He wiped it off against the side of his pants and the arm hurt when he moved it. His head swam a little at the stab of pain that ran from shoulder to fingertips.

"It looks as if it did more than nick your vehicle."

"Aw, crap," Stiles turned to take in the damage. The front half of the Jeep was mangled, like, say for instance a huge, enraged uber bear-like-beast had rammed it. The front fender was bent in, metal pressing against the tire.

"I'll have someone tow it. I have a mechanic who can pound that out for you."

"Really?"

"That's okay - -" Stiles and Scott said simultaneously. Stiles gave him a questioning look and other than looking back with a wide eyed stare of desperation, he couldn't just up and blurt that these guys - - that the white haired one in particular - - were freaking him the hell out.

"No. I insist. It would be unconscionable of me to leave two boys, one of whom is wounded, stranded in the woods."

"I'm not - -" Scott started to deny it, but the blood was dribbling down the back of his hand again.

And that thing wasn't a bear and they knew it and the last thing he needed was scrutiny by a group of militarized hunters who might or might not have a taste for unconventional game.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Stiles didn't know when his life had turned from one big boring episode of bland middle Americana, to not even being able to take a simple road trip without threat to life and limb. Well - - okay - - technically he _did_ know - - to the day - - to even the hour even, but that wasn't the point he was trying to make in his head. The point being that it sucked in an astronomically major way that two days into a what was supposed to be a fun filled escape from all the supernatural drama that had descended upon Beacon Hills, a gigantic _supernatural_ beast had tried to rip them to shreds.

And pretty much succeeded with Scott, who'd gotten tossed around like a werewolf shaped stuffed animal instead of an actual werewolf, before the thing - - the humongous, black, snarly faced - - so absolutely not a bear - - thing had turned around and decided to bat the Jeep around like it was a tinker toy. Or maybe a can of tuna it was trying to tear the lid off so it could sink its teeth into the juicy bits inside. Namely him.

Yeah, he'd screamed like a girl when the Jeep had taken that initial impact and gotten twisted around and mashed into the trees. He could only hope with all the snarling and the shattering of glass and the mashing of metal that Scott hadn't heard, because there were some things you never lived down.

But then Scott had been pretty messed up before his werewolf healing had kicked in and given him some relief. Which didn't help cover the blood and the shredded hoodie, the worst damage of which Scott was sort of keeping hidden with his back to the Jeep.

But these guys seemed a little less interested in them than they were in the thing they'd riddled with bullets that was lying out in the woods. They were just two dumb kids who happened to have picked the absolutely worst spot in California to go camping. If it wasn't for the Jeep being pretty much totaled - - and he'd just gotten her fixed - - he'd have high tailed it out of there without even bothering to gather up the camping gear.

But then the white haired guy, who the others seemed to defer to, seemed pretty set against that notion. Seemed pretty intent on making sure they were okay after literally having the plot of some sci-fi channel horror movie unfold around them and there was always the chance that it was genuine concern. The odds had to swing in their favor once in a while, right? And just because these guys were armed like they were on their way to take over a third world nation, didn't mean they made the habit of going around killing innocent bystanders. That would be ridiculous. And Stiles' life never veered into the bazaar and ridiculous. Right.

He backed up a step, swallowing, hitting the Jeep with a thump and leaning there next to Scott while dark figures were scurrying in the woods, the flatbed backing up as close as it could get to the trees, the red of its taillights the only illumination save for faint, cloud obscured moonlight.

"Okay - - so is it just me feeling like we stepped in something really terrible here?"

"No," Scott said softly, eyes following the movement in the woods, his enhanced vision probably picking up a lot more detail than Stiles' patently human ones.

"Soo - - you ever seen anything like that?" He leaned in closer and whispered. They hadn't really had the chance to talk since the night went to shit. "Is there such a thing as a werebear?"

Scott opened his mouth, shut it, seeming pretty stymied by that question, then he shook his head warily. There was something strained about the way he was holding his body, his lips pressed tight, something in his eyes that hinted he was putting an effort into holding himself together. The thing had sliced up him pretty badly that last time it had hit him, and maybe it was taking a while to heal. Maybe he just didn't like this situation any more than Stiles.

"You okay?"

Scott didn't answer, just flicked his eyes towards the white haired guy, who was staring at them speculatively. The man said something to one of his minions - - he looked like the sort of guy who'd have minions and maybe a grudge against James Bond - - then started walking towards them.

"I'm assuming you have parents that need to be notified of this mishap."

Which was not the sort of thing a Bond villain might say and it threw Stiles off his game of brewing up nefarious scenarios in his head.

"God no," the last thing Stiles needed was his dad freaking out about another near death experience when he'd spent practically two days convincing him of the merits of him actually being safer if he was outside the town limits of Beacon Hills.

"I mean," he started again, attempting to cover that initial panic fueled denial. "Of course we have parents. Everybody has parents. There's just no need to bother them with this. Its not like we're in trouble, right?"

He glanced at Scott who nodded in reluctant agreement. If they were going to call anybody it needed to be someone with a little less intimately personal parental judginess attached. Like Allison, who had a dad that just might be in the know about giant bear like monsters and the sort of men that might hunt them.

The white haired guy lifted a brow, looking from him to Scott.

"As you wish. I'll have someone gather your gear and bring it back to the lodge when they tow your vehicle."

"Listen, that's really decent of you, but honestly, dude, you're sort of freaking us out with all the guns - -maybe we'll just call a tow on our own."

"The closest town is an hour's drive. You'd be stranded here for the night and I make no guarantees that the animal we killed was alone."

"The _bear_ you killed?"

The man smiled and inclined his head.

"We can take care of ourselves," Scott said, but after the run in with the first one, Stiles had to doubt the veracity of that claim.

"Can we?" Stiles asked, really softly.

Scott gave him a look, the wariness melting into something closer to panic.

"What Lodge?" Stiles asked.

"My lodge. I'm Julian Dupont, I run a resort just north of here. A preserve actually, which was where this unfortunate animal escaped. I assure you, none of my guests have ever met their end at the business end of a gun."

"You have a mechanic that can fix my Jeep?"

"It's the least I can do, considering it was one of my animals that damaged it."

He looked at Scott, who really looked as if he wanted to not have anything to do with this man, but he was wavering. A lot paler than he usually was, a faint sheen of sweat on his face. Staying out here all night with him like this was not an option Stiles was comfortable with. Finally he gave in with a short nod and Stiles let out a breath.

"Okay," he said, giving Scott a silent _'dude, just go with it'_, look.

Dupont waved a hand towards the hummer. "I'll call ahead and let them to know expect you."

"Let me just get our jackets." He scampered to the tent, and grabbed their coats and Scott's duffle bag with its non-shredded replacement shirts. He tossed Scott's jacket at him and Scott fumbled to catch it left-handed, his dominant right one held to his side. Which was a pretty obvious indication that the not healing supposition was a good one.

Scott pulled the jacket on with a wince, covering the bloody rips in his shirt before he moved towards the Hummer.

It was an uncomfortable ride to Dupont's lodge. Dupont himself didn't ride with them, staying to oversee the clean up. He had a pair of his stone-faced minions accompany them and they weren't inclined to answer questions. Them sitting up in the front of the big vehicle proved problematic for talking about the specifics of what had happened with Scott, even if Scott had been in a talky mood. Which he didn't seem to be. Stiles probably wouldn't have gotten a whole hell of a lot out of him even if they didn't have company, but that was mostly, Stiles thought, because he was dealing a lot of pain.

It took thirty minutes of twisty, backcountry road before they reached a big set of gates, already open. Another twenty minutes of riding through heavily forested hills before the Lodge came into view. And what a view. The thing was like some rustic fantasy off Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous come to life. It was huge, fully constructed of logs, some of which looked to be entire redwood trunks.

They got out and just sort of stared at it in awe, until a woman came out of the sprawling double-doored entrance and greeted them with an indulgent smile.

"Quite inspiring isn't it? My grandfather built it, but my brother and I have added a few touches of our own. " She held out a hand. "I'm Jan Dupont. My brother called and told me of your misfortune in encountering our runaway. You have my apologies."

She was a feminine version of Julian Dupont. Same prematurely white hair, same long limbed body but with more curves. Her face was a little too angular to be called pretty, but she was striking. Maybe forty - forty-five, but she wore it well.

"Uhh - - thanks - -" Stiles fumbled for the hand she still had out. Her fingers were strong and cool. "It was no big deal."

Scott gave him a faintly incredulous look at that underexaggeration and lifted a brow. "I doubt that. I'm frankly surprised the two of you didn't arrive in considerably worse shape than you did. The beast you encountered is a particularly nasty species of Russian black bear and this one was - - not quite in its right mind. My brother said one of you was injured."

"No," Scott denied it. "It just clipped me. Bruised my shoulder. I'm fine."

She shifted her gaze from Stiles to Scott, assessing. "It got close enough to clip you and you came away with a bruise. You are a lucky boy, aren't you - -?" She trailed off with a questioning tone and faint, patient smile.

"Scott," Scott supplied what she was looking for. "Scott McCall."

"Stiles. Stilinski." Stiles followed suit when she glanced at him.

Her pale brow rose again, amused. "Stiles Stilinski?"

"That's me. Sooo - - this is a like a hotel?"

She laughed. "Yes, like a hotel. In that we entertain very exclusive guests that pay a great deal to enjoy our facilities. Presidents and heads of state have graced our halls."

They followed her up onto the sprawling covered porch and inside, to what proved a considerably less rustic interior. It still had that great outdoorsy feel to it, but with an eye to luxury and comfort. A huge fireplace dominated a room filled with comfortable seating. A gigantic chandelier made of the antlers loomed over the room. Twin sets of wide stairs flanked the fireplace, leading up to a second floor balcony.

"What sort of facilities?"

She smiled at him and waved a hand towards the stairs. "I'm sure you're both tired, woken in the dead of night by an unexpected guest. You have my deepest apologies. Let me show you to your room."

He glanced at Scott, who was staring at the array of mounted animal heads that decorated nearly every wall. A lot of dead things here, a lot of black, glass eyes staring down accusingly. It was creepy as hell.

"This is not disturbing at all," he leaned in to whisper to Scott as they passed the head of a snarling cougar at the top of the stairs. Scott gave him a look that Stiles interpreted as meaning he'd rather be somewhere pulling out nails than here.

The room she showed them to was pretty much in line with the rest of the place. Two big queen beds, a fireplace with a leather couch in front of it on what looked like an actual real, bearskin rug. A mini bar that looked like it was stocked with an awful lot of expensive booze.

"Is the bar comped, too?" Stiles asked hopefully.

"Are you legal?"

"Uh - - I could be?"

She smiled. "If I had to guess - - seventeen?"

He exchanged a look with Scott and admitted. "Yeah, good guess."

"I've a good eye. Seventeen's an excellent year." She gave him an under the lashes look and brushed her fingers across the back of his hand in what might have been just a polite way of taking her leave or might have been something else entirely.

"Make yourselves comfortable and if you feel the need to sample from the bar - - I won't tell, if you won't."

He stared at his hand after she'd gone, then at the door she'd softly shut behind her. "Oh my god, dude, did I just get hit on by a cougar? Was she hitting on me? Did you see that?"

He felt weirdly elated by the notion. Granted, she was old enough to be his mom and then some and sort of intimidating - - but still, it wasn't every day he got come hither looks from women, but less subtle innuendo.

"Stiles," Scott let out a breath with enough force that it sounded like he'd been holding it for a while. "I think I got shot - -and its not healing."

"What? Why not?" Scott managed to douse Stiles' momentary high with that statement.

"I don't know," he grimaced as Stiles helped him peel off the jacket. It was sticky on the inside with blood. His shirt was wet with it.

"Aw, crap, you're still bleeding."

"I know. I think the bullet's still in there." He took a step towards the bathroom and staggered a little, one knee giving out. Stiles shored him up, helped get him to the bathroom - - which given any other circumstance he would have had to stop and gawk at. Because it was huge and awesome and practically bigger than his bedroom at home.

Scott leaned a hip against a vanity made from one huge polished section of wood, and let Stiles help him with the bloody tatters of his shirt. There were only the faintest traces of a set of gouges along his side and back, but the hole in his shoulder was fresh and ugly, seeping deep red blood.

"Well - fuck. Why is it not healing? It's not like one of those bullets laced with some sort wolfsbane, is it?"

Scott shook his head, awkwardly trying to probe at the edges of it with his left hand. He couldn't reach it very well and all he managed was to make a new trickle of blood ooze out. It made Stiles just a little lightheaded watching it.

"I don't think so. It doesn't feel like it."

"Okay, so what usually happens when you guys get shot? I mean it normally heals on its own, right?"

Scott cast him a vaguely annoyed look. "It's not like it happens all the time. But I think maybe the bullets just sort of get expelled. Maybe - - maybe its lodged in the bone and I can't get rid of it?"

"Ahh - - gross. Just gross. And how are we gonna fix it, because I'm thinking they're gonna notice eventually if you're bleeding all over the place or passing out from blood loss. You're looking pretty bad."

Scott met his eyes in the mirror. "You're gonna have to dig it out."

Which was really not the solution Stiles had wanted to hear. He put a hand on the edge of the sink, his stomach flip-flopping enough to make his knees weak. "Okay and what's the second option?"

Scott kept looking at him, desperate and pale and not willing to brainstorm on other less disgusting, less likely to make Stiles loose everything he'd eaten in the last twenty-four hours method of dealing with the problem.

"Ah - - fuck. Just - - fuck, dude. How am I supposed to do that?"

"Your pocket knife."

"You want me to dig into your flesh with my pocket knife?"

Scott ground his teeth, holding on to control and patience. "I don't _want_ you to - - but I'm sorta out of options."

Which was a fantastic analogy for the path their lives had taken lately - -lots of shit neither one of them had much control over - - that only got worse when it was avoided. He made a frustrated sound and dug into his pocket for his Swiss army knife.

"This so sucks - - hugely, massively sucks."

"Yeah, its gonna be terrible for you," Scott muttered with an impressive burst of sarcasm, considering he generally left the sensitive task of ladling it out up to Stiles.

"The shower. Let's do it in the shower where it'll be easier to clean up the blood. And yes, I'm amazed too, that those words just came out of my mouth." Stiles pulled Scott towards the big, glass-fronted, marble tiled walk in shower. The thing could have accommodated six.

Scott leaned a clenched fist against the wall, tensing up in expectation.

"Sit down." Stiles directed, dropping to a crouch himself. Scott looked over his shoulder, brow furrowed.

Stiles shrugged. "When one of us faints - - it'll be closer to the floor."

"God," Scott let out a miserable breath and sank down to his knees.

There was nothing to do but man up, even as his testicles wanted to shrink up into his body, and start cutting into his best friend.

It was the most sickening feeling in the world when the knife slid into flesh of Scott's shoulder, and whole fresh trickle of blood oozed out. Scott's fists clenched up and he dropped his head to the tile wall. But he didn't make a sound, other than the audible grinding of teeth.

"Sorry - - Dude, I'm so sorry - -" Stiles was muttering under his breath, trying to inhale enough oxygen to keep his head from spinning. He tried to zero in on the wound, tried to separate it from Scott - -tried to think of it like it was piece of meat he was carving up that had nothing to do with a human being. It worked a little, mostly because his vision had started to tunnel alarmingly and all he could really focus on was the blood stained patch of flesh that the blade of his knife was sliding into way too easily, down a pathway already eased by a bullet. And he really, really needed to maybe start humming to cover the sickening suckling sound of the blade slicing into Scott's flesh.

Then the tip of the knife clicked against something that he hoped wasn't bone and Scott made a desperate strangled sound, the hands he had on the wall suddenly sprouting claws.

"Don't wolf out on me. I think that's it," Stiles muttered, feeling around with the tip of the knife against something solid and metallic lodged tight against what might have been Scott's shoulder blade.

He put a hand on Scott's back for leverage, swallowed back the bile that was creeping up his throat and started prying at the bullet.

Scott did scream then, an aborted half cry that turned into a growl and Stiles swore and leaned a shoulder against him, pressing him into the wall, needing the bullet dislodged and fast before Scott lost control and did something out of sheer animal panic and pain that both of them would regret. He made a damned ugly mess of the wound, twisting the knife, but with a quiet little click the tip of the knife freed the entrenched bullet. He felt it then, this loose little pellet that he could just edge out, closer to the surface if he urged it with the tip of the knife.

"Almost got it - - almost got it - -" he was hissing through clenched teeth. Then he saw the blood covered black tip of it at the edge of the wound and he dropped the knife and plucked at it with blood-covered fingers.

"Oh my God," he let himself fall forwards, sprawling on the against the wall next to Scott, blood soaking the legs of his jeans, staring at the nasty little mashed up bit of metal that had most likely caused him permanent mental scarring. He glanced over to Scott, who had was leaning with his good shoulder to the wall, and was visibly shaking, even as the edges of the wound that Stiles had made three times its original size were starting to close. There was wetness on his cheeks and blood on his mouth, where he'd likely bitten through his own tongue during the impromptu surgery.

Stiles felt wetness on his own cheeks and hadn't even realized he'd been crying. Considering the circumstances he felt justified. For the both of them.

"That may literally have been the most traumatizing thing I've ever experienced. And I've experienced some traumatic shit."

Scott looked exhausted and pretty traumatized himself. Physical trauma as opposed to Stiles' mental scarring. Stiles offered the bullet, but Scott just looked at it like he was offering him a freshly plucked eyeball or something, so Stiles wiped it off on his jeans and stuffed it into his pocket.

"You okay?"

Scott nodded. "I think. Yeah."

"That's great. Don't ever ask me to do something like that again. "

"I'll try and avoid it." He tried for a smile and only managed the barest hint of it. Still it was an effort and Stiles laughed a little hysterically, wrapped an arm around Scott's neck and pulled him into an embrace that verged on desperation. It had been a truly fucked up night. The sort of night that the fact that you were even alive was a great and miraculous thing.

"We should call somebody. Let them know we're here. Allison maybe. She can ask her dad about the bear thing."

"Yeah," Scott mumbled against his shoulder, not sounding particularly enthused. But maybe he was just wasted. God knew Stiles felt completely, utterly wiped. Like even the effort of getting up out of the all the blood on the shower floor would be too much of an effort to contemplate.

But then, he was sitting in a lot of blood on a shower floor and the more he thought about it, the more icked out he got, so an effort had to be made. He nudged Scott into motion, pushing himself up and reaching down a hand to help Scott, who looked at it, sighed, and finally relented, using Stiles to haul himself up.

First things first, they needed not to track blood all over the room, which entailed stripping down to boxers and leaving bloody clothing in a pile on the shower floor while they took turns showering and washing the blood off skin and clothes and the tiles of the shower.

With the evidence washed down the drain and clothing as blood free as they could reasonably get it with hand washing, they retreated to the room, Stiles heading for the bar for a well deserved 'sampling' of the refreshments, and Scott sitting on the edge of one of the beds, staring at his cell, trying to work up the nerve to call Allison.

When he finally convinced himself to make the call, he looked at the phone and frowned, holding it up to Stiles and declaring. "No signal."

"What? Really?" Stiles put down a bottle what he thought was very expensive double malt scotch and went to get his own cell on the dresser along with the rest of the contents of his currently wet jeans. The bars on his phone were non-existent.

"Me either. What the hell?"

Scott flopped backwards onto his bed, tossing the phone aside and covering his eyes with a forearm. "Honestly, dude, I'm okay with calling her tomorrow."

Stiles figured with all that had happened tonight, Scott wasn't up to the added trauma of talking with Allison when it had finally begun to sink in that the 'we're just taking a time out' fantasy he'd been playing out in his head, was in reality more of a 'she's moved on, my world view is shattered' sort of scenario.

Stiles felt for him. He really did. He'd have felt more if Scott had managed to figure it out a few months earlier when the rest of their little clique had been pretty much clued in. But then, Scott could only be faulted so much for being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, he had a lot of things on his mind.

He sat down on the edge of his own bed, which was a lot more comfortable than a sleeping bag on the ground in a tent in the cold rain would have been. The creepiness of all the stuffed animal heads decorating the walls of this place aside, ending up here maybe wasn't such a bad thing after all. So he shoved down that little lingering sense of wariness that kept picking at the back of his mind, just for tonight, and collapsed backwards into uber soft comforters with a sigh.

Presidents and heads of state had stayed here after all, and if that wasn't a ringing endorsement for this not being a place where guests disappeared never to be heard from again, he didn't know what was.


	4. Chapter 4

4

The Jeep was in pretty bad shape.

Scott and Stiles slogged down to the garage bright and early to take a look. Well - - not exactly bright or early - - but it was the effort that counted. It was snowing and it had almost been eleven when Scott had finally poked his head out from beneath the covers and blinked back to consciousness. Stiles had still been dead to the world, a Stiles-shaped lump under the covers of his own bed, but then they'd had a pretty late, pretty awful night.

The traces of it at least had faded entirely from Scott's skin. Other than a ruined shirt and some bloodstains that they couldn't get out, it was like it had never happened. Except that it had and he could still smell the blood, even diluted on his jacket, as well as the lingering scent of the thing that had attacked them.

They'd tromped down to the main floor once he'd dragged Stiles out of bed, and asked directions to the garage from the girl serving coffee to two old guys smoking cigars and reading newspapers on one of the leather couches before the big fireplace. Legitimate guests.

It made the place seem a little less ominous, even with all the dead animal heads leering down from every direction, knowing that this was an actual hotel of sorts, with lodge staff puttering around doing their jobs and the smell of coffee and the fading remnants of breakfast drifting in the air.

There was a set of glass doors that he hadn't noticed on his first trip through this room, leading to really posh looking dining room. Another set leading off to what looked like maybe a gaming room, and a few off shooting halls leading deeper into the lodge. There were pictures on the wall behind the long, gleaming wooden bar in the main room of the Dupont's in the company of people he assumed were influential and important.

The girl manning the impressive looking espresso machine was young and pretty, even if she did look down her nose a little at them, like they were strays her boss had brought in out of the night.

"Follow the road to the left once you get outside and it'll take you down to the garage. Its about a quarter mile."

A quarter mile in a snow that was still wet enough to verge on light sleet, but Stiles wanted to see the Jeep in the light of day. So they slogged through the weather, down the long gravel road that led behind the main lodge.

"You don't need to say it," Stiles said, looking miserable and cold, cheeks spotted with a little bit of red, flakes of wet snow clumping in his hair.

"Say what?" Sometimes they were completely in sync, other times he had to give Stiles a little prodding to give him clues to what was going on inside his head.

"You know. That you were right and I was wrong. Yeah, I said it and it doesn't happen often, but in this - - okay. Maybe this trip was a bad idea."

Scott gave Stiles a dubious look. "I didn't say it was a bad idea."

"Yeah, well you came close enough."

Scott sighed and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"It wasn't a bad idea. It was just - -bad luck."

"Yeah? Do we have any other kind?"

"I like to think so. I'm sorta thinking we wouldn't be alive otherwise."

Stiles gave him a look, as if he were trying to figure out whether Scott was practicing a little sarcasm. He finally rolled his eyes and muttered. "Oh my God - - optimism."

Scott shrugged, tossing him a smile. "When all else fails. Hey at least its snowing."

"Like that's a good thing." He dug in his pocket for his cell, checking for a signal again. "Damn. Still nothing."

The lodge garage was a big corrugated metal hanger looking structure shielded from the view of the lodge by a thin strip of trees. It was large enough to house two hummers and a couple of SUV's and still have room for the flatbed truck from last night and a battered old Jeep.

Stiles stalked around it, bemoaning its sorry state. And it did look pretty pitiful, beat up and abandoned in the midst of a lot of really expensive, shiny vehicles. It didn't look like anybody had started doing anything to alleviate any of the damage yet.

"Hey aren't you supposed to fixing this?" Stiles demanded of one of the two mechanics puttering around the garage. They were both sort of huge, Slavic looking guys, who gave Scott the impression of lacking anything remotely resembling senses of humor.

One of them stood up from the bench he'd been sitting at, tinkering with some big, oily looking engine part. He ambled over as Stiles was stabbing a finger at the Jeep, scowling over the various damage.

"Front axel is bent. Driver's side door unrepairable," the guy rumbled in a thick accent. "Ordered parts from yard in Dixon, that'll be in tomorrow. Or the next day."

"The next day?" Stiles exclaimed with the sort of impatient agitation that suggested he'd totally missed the fact that the guy outweighed him maybe twice over and looked sort of like Dolph Lundgren's older, larger brother. "What? You can't bang it out? I thought you were going to bang the dents out? It doesn't even look like you've started?"

The guy beetled his brows, and it looked as if he were contemplating banging a few dents into Stiles, who experienced the occasional odd bout of obliviousness when it came to self-preservation.

"Yeah, okay. Thanks." Scott caught Stiles arm and pulled him bodily backwards.

"So we're stuck here for another day or two? We're gonna miss the show."

Stiles' bitched about plans gone awry the rest of the walk back to the lodge. Scott nodded when he was supposed to nod, commiserated when Stiles tossed him expectant looks and generally directed half his attention to the white that had turned into real snow while they'd been in the garage poking the mechanics. It was starting to stick to the ground and the trees, coating everything in a thin film of icy white.

They stomped off snow and ice on the front porch, before going back inside the lodge. The warmth of the place was like a welcome slap in the face when they walked in.

Dupont was sitting in one of the leather chairs across from the two old guys in front of the gigantic hearth. His sister was conferring with the girl at the espresso machine. She waved them over when they hesitated inside the door. He hadn't been particularly keen on the details last night, most of his energy directed into simply not falling down, but he picked up on them now. She was every bit as tall as her brother, and she wasn't even wearing heels. There was a faintly Slavic look to both siblings, but they lacked anything resembling an accent. She smiled at them and it wasn't the sort of smile that lit up a room, but more like one that made you think she was thinking inappropriate things.

She gave him a long up and down look, which concreted that inappropriate thoughts notion he'd had and made him sort of want to edge behind Stiles, before she turned her attention to Stiles and laid long fingers on his forearm.

"I see the two of you found the garage. I'm told the repairs to your vehicle will take a little longer than anticipated."

"Yeah, we heard," Stiles groused. "What's with the lack of cell signal up here?"

She smiled and waved a hand. "The surrounding foothills are rich with iron ore. It tends to interfere with the signals. But that serves us well. We pride ourselves on being a retreat from the stresses of civilization. Our guests come here to escape and the lack of technology is part of that escape."

"No computers? No TV?" Stiles asked, having already noted the lamentable lack of a television in their room.

Jan Dupont shrugged.

"That's not escape. That's just punishment," Stiles muttered.

"Are you hungry?"

She led them to the kitchen and what looked like a staff dining room off to the side of it. There were smells coming from the place that were mouthwatering. The cook made them sandwiches. The best sandwiches Scott had ever consumed. Roast beef on buns fresh from the oven with this sauce that made him sort of want to pull up roots and live here. They forgot their problems for a little slice of time while they sat there at a long plank table and wallowed in the luxury of a gourmet lunch.

Dupont himself came by when they were finishing up, plotting among themselves whether they could beg seconds from the chef. He leaned on the table next to Stiles and looked across at Scott.

"You look considerably improved from last night. I feared I might have to call in a physician."

"Uh, yeah. I'm good."

"Nothing a good night's sleep couldn't take care of, " Stiles chipped in helpfully.

"I'm relieved to hear it. I understand you'll be marooned here for another few days while parts come in for your Jeep. I appreciate that two teenagers might find our retreat a bit rustic with the lack of modern conveniences, but I'm sure you'll find something to occupy yourselves."

Scott widened his eyes in embarrassment that Stiles complaints had gotten back to Dupont already.

"No, we're okay. We're just happy you're fixing the jeep for free. Right, Stiles?" he tossed him a pointed look.

Stiles rolled his eyes and grudgingly agreed. "Yeah, really happy about that."

Dupont smiled. "Good to hear. Why don't you try a few of our trails? With the snow, they should be quite beautiful. There's also the stable, if you'd like to try your hand at horseback riding."

"Trails through the woods where you said there might be another crazy 'Russian bear'?" Stiles asked warily.

Dupont's smile didn't change an iota. "That is no longer a possibility. I assure you our trails are safe."

"What happened to the one from last night?" Scott asked.

"It was disposed of."

"And will you stuff and mount it, like the rest of the animals in here?"

Dupont canted his head, faint amusement in his eyes, not missing the distaste that Scott couldn't keep from his voice. "Do you disapprove of a hunter paying tribute to his prey for a game well played?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking the game's sort of rigged. Guns against teeth and claws doesn't sound so fair."

"You might be surprised." Dupont said.

"Not so much," Stiles muttered under his breath, tossing Scott an under the lashes look warning that this line of conversation was veering into dangerous territory. Scott couldn't help it. The animal heads bothered him. The idea of killing something majestic and then staking it out like a trophy for the murder just sat wrong.

But Dupont let it drop, more than likely not prepared to waste his time getting into a philosophical argument with a seventeen-year-old freeloader. He wished them a good day and strode off.

So with nothing better to do, they ventured back outside. In the hour they'd been inside, the snow had covered everything in a fine white layer. It muffled everything, made the world pristine and new again. They tromped out into it and his mood lightened immediately at the sheer enjoyment of a snow-covered world. It hadn't snowed the last two years in Beacon Hills and he'd missed it. Stiles was less enthusiastic, complaining of cold fingers and soggy shoes, so Scott lobbed a soggy snowball at him and scored a side of the head hit, which shut him up and started a war.

As snowball fights went, there wasn't a lot of ammunition with only an inch or so of actual snow on the ground, but they made the best of it and were both pretty crusted with ice and snow by the time Stiles begged a ceasefire and stood bent over his knees, brushing snow off his hair from the last dead on strike Scott had made. Stiles bitched and complained about him cheating by using werewolf abilities, but it wasn't like he could turn them off. Not like he could flip an internal switch and make his aim less deadly, or his body perform at half power - - He could physically try and hold himself back, to slow himself down, to try and ignore the sounds and the scents that always wanted to intrude, but it took a constant effort.

Stiles understood, even though he liked to gripe about the unfairness of it all, when it came down to physical contests. It was okay, since Stiles could kick his ass at word games and puzzle solving. So it all evened out.

They tried the stables, even though Stiles professed a profound uncertainty about his compatibility with horses. But it was Scott that proved the problem, when the horses caught his scent and went into panic mode inside their stalls. They high tailed it out of there, while the stable hand tried to convince his charges that a wolf hadn't just wondered into the stable to eat them.

After a couple of hours they'd both had enough of the cold and headed back down the increasingly snow covered trail they'd been following towards the lodge.

"So, you get Allison a Christmas present?" Stiles asked, his hands stuffed under his armpits inside his jacket.

"What? Why? Did you get Lydia one?" Scott countered, feeling just a bit of a rush of guilty panic.

"Of course I got Lydia one," Stiles scoffed as if Scott were an idiot for even questioning the possibility. "I got her two actually, but one was like a backup just in case she didn't like the first. She's picky, you know."

Scott shrugged, agreeing with that one on principle. "I was planning on getting Allison something - - but like a friend gift, because - -you know - -?"

"You just being friends and all?"

"Right. But I wasn't sure what qualified as girlfriend gift and just a friend gift - - soooo I was sorta putting it off. And then you dragged me out of town and I never got the chance to go shopping."

"Dude, you haven't done any shopping have you?"

Scott shrugged. On his list of important daily things to accomplish, shopping of any kind tended to rank pretty low.

"Even for you mom?"

"Well, I was going to. I figured I'd pick something up while we were on the road and bring it back."

"You suck. I got all my shit bought and wrapped and ready to go. Dad's taken care of, Allison's gonna give Lydia her present from me when she sees her Christmas day because I don't trust Lydia not to open it before then."

"Really?

"Yeah, really."

"Oh." For a kid that tended to bounce off the walls with pent up energy when his ADHD kicked into high gear, Stiles could be ridiculously well organized when he put his mind to it.

"What did you get her?"

"A pair of boots."

"Shoes?"

"Boots. She likes boots. Shoes. Things she wears on her feet. Geeze, its not like I got her lingerie anything."

Scott lifted a brow at the defensive tone. "And what was the second thing?"

Stiles shrugged. "A book on God Particles."

Scott blinked at him warily. "Like a religious book?"

"No dumb ass, its theoretical physics. She mentioned something about being interested in the Higgs Boson effect in the linear universe and - - anyway, I found a signed copy of book by Higgs on Ebay and thought she'd like it. So what were you thinking about getting Allison as a just friend gift again?"

Scott tossed him an irritated glare and kicked at a snow-covered stick in the path. "I have no idea. I don't even know if I should now. Would it seem weird?"

"Eh. I dunno. No weirder than anything else she'd expect from you. You haven't exactly descended to stalkery behavior, but with the right incentive I bet you could get there."

"Oh, God. I don't want to get there."

Stiles shrugged, suddenly looking pleased with himself. "You could catch a squirrel or something and have them stuff it and mount it up at the lodge and give it to her. It would almost be like you made it yourself - - give it that personal touch."

"Fuck off."

Stiles smirked and Scott started contemplating tackling him and pushing him face first into the snow.

That's when he caught the scent. It came at him, like scents sometimes did, rushing up and hitting him with an almost visceral intensity. That same subtle, odd scent from the beast last night. The same - - but not quite.

He stopped dead in his tracks, the hair on the back of his arms standing up.

"What?" Stiles demanded. Had maybe asked more than once while Scott was standing there, assaulted by his own hyper vigilant senses. From the north, it came from the north. He shook his head, veering off the trail, treading through unmarred snow through the trees.

"Damnit, Scott, what the hell?" Stiles hissed, following him.

"I smell it. That thing."

"What thing? Not THE thing? The one that almost killed us, thing?"

"Yeah," he confirmed, most of his attention focused on following the trail of the scent. It shifted in the cold air, unique and distinct, his awareness of it so sharp that he could almost '_see'_ it in wafting in the air before it. That's what following a scent was like now, like trailing a surreal rainbow of olfactory colors.

Stiles was making frustrated, gargling sounds behind him. "Are you out of your freakin' mind? The correct response if you smell something that has the ability to toss around cars and to shred us with its razor sharp claws, is to go the other direction."

"I just want to - -" he stopped, staring down at a coned, metal pipe protruding from the ground at the edge of the woods. A ventilation pipe, maybe. They could see the backside of the lodge across an expanse of snow-covered ground.

"What? You just wanted to what? Drag me into mortal danger? Because trying to track down - - wait, what is that?" Stiles caught up with him and stared down at the shaft.

"The scent's coming from there."

"This is a ventilation shaft. Is there something below? Must be something down below."

"Yeah," Scott agreed.

Stiles looked up at him with worried brown eyes. "I don't wanna know. This is so not our business. We so do not need to know what's down there."

Scott stared at the shaft, the scent branding itself into his awareness. Other scents as well. Blood and sweat and smoke, earth and stone and oxidation. He put the tips of his fingers on the cold, cold metal of the cone and heard through layers of earth and stone the vibrating roar of something enraged and desperate.

He snatched his hand back in surprise and looked to Stiles. But Stiles hadn't heard, just like Stiles couldn't 'see' the trail of a scent in the air.

"We do not need to worry about whatever the hell you're smelling, dude. We need to get the Jeep fixed and get out of here without any more fucked-up shit ruining this trip."

It was a reasonable plan. Stiles generally tended to come up with reasonable plans. Except when he didn't. But then his record was better than Scott's.

"Yeah, you're right."

"Damn right, I'm right. Geeze. Just when I'm starting to be a little less freaked out about this place you have to go and ruin it for me."

"Sorry."

Stiles took a breath and stomped off across the field towards the lodge. "Just stop smelling shit."

"I can't just stop. I just do."

"Well ignore it."

That Scott could sort of do. Stopping thinking about it was another thing altogether.

When they slunk back into the lodge, the main room was deserted. It was barely four o'clock and they had a whole night to kill with no Internet and no TV to help pass the time. They took turns melting the cold away in the massive shower. Then sat on Stiles' bed with a deck of cards and played through the repertoire of card games they both knew. Went through a bout of wrestling, which Scott won handily, after Stiles got bored with legitimate games and decided to try a hand of 52 pick up, and then finally sat on the floor and stared mournfully at the unresponsive face of their smart phones, lamenting their disconnect with the world.

"We could go downstairs and see if they'll feed us again," Scott suggested.

"I guess. I wonder if they'll let us into the billiards room, or if that's for paying guests only?"

"I dunno. Let's find out."

The doors to the game room were actually open when they came downstairs but the two old guys were inside, playing pool and the room was cloudy with cigar smoke, which made Scott's eyes water a little even from the next room, so they veered down the hall leading to the kitchen where the smells were much nicer. It smelled as if something delicious and poultry related was roasting. Stiles was all set to veer off into the kitchen, but Scott caught his arm, staring down at the doorway at the end of the hall. It was faint, almost imperceptible, but he caught the scent again. Along with the smell of stone and earth.

Stiles gave him a questioning look and he jerked his chin towards the far doorway. It took Stiles a second, but he got it without the benefit of words and narrowed his eyes in frustration. He shook his head once, vehemently and gave Scott a shove towards the kitchen.

"Whatever you're thinking - - no. Just no."

There wasn't a lot of room for argument with the kitchen staff looking up at them.

"Dinner is at six," the chef informed them with a pointed stare.

"Soda's?" Stiles inquired and the man sighed as though they were severely disrupting his flow and waved a hand towards a glass-fronted refrigerator stocked with all manner of bottled beverages.

So they each grabbed a soda and went back to the main room to flop down on the leather furniture around the hearth. There were a few magazines and newspapers on the side tables, which Stiles poked through out of desperation. Scott sat nursing his Pepsi, staring at the passage leading to that door. He couldn't scent anything out here, with the cloying stench of cigar smoke covering the less poignant smells. But he knew it something was behind that door. Something not natural. Something maybe that had been driven to extremes last night.

"Stop looking," Stiles hissed at him.

"Don't you want to know what it is?"

"It tried to eat me. So no, not particularly."

"They're lying about it."

"Yeah, so? We lie about you being a werewolf all the time." Stiles lowered his voice to a hushed whisper on that last part, but Scott still looked around to make sure no one had drifted in to the room to overhear. Stiles had a point though. Scott sank a little deeper into the cushions and frowned, not liking it.

"What are the chances of you just letting it go?"

"I don't know. Fifty percent?"

Stiles arched a brow at him. Scott rolled his eyes and amended. "Twenty-five."

Stiles held up a magazine with a cover shot of a woman with a massive rifle on her hip, one booted foot on the back a dead brown bear. "This is the mentality we're dealing with here. I'm thinking don't piss them off."

Six hours later, after a supper that had probably been fantastic, but Scott had managed to plow through without really tasting, after two games of pool and a half dozen rounds of darts in the game room that Jan Dupont had told them they were free to use as long as the other guests were not in attendance, he still couldn't get that door and what lay behind it, off his mind.

Stiles had gotten into the mini-bar and done a bit of sampling of the various liquors stocked within. He was lying on his back on the bed, playing some game on his phone, just wasted enough that the lack of anything resembling real entertainment wasn't such a hardship.

"I'm gonna go downstairs," Scott said.

Stiles blinked up at him. "Seriously? Is your goal in life to make mine miserable?"

"Just chill up here. Play Angry Birds. I won't be long."

"The hell," Stiles tossed his phone down and sat up. He swayed a little until he took several deep breaths, then narrowed his eyes at Scott accusingly. "If you're going to do something stupid - - and let me get it on the record right now - - this is stupid - - then the least I can do is have your back."

"You don't have to - -"

"I know that. And if we run into anything even vaguely snarley I'm so abandoning you and running like hell. Just so you know."

"That's a good plan. But I just want to take a look."

"Famous last words."

Stiles shoved his feet into his sneakers and stood up. Wavered a little more until Scott caught his arm and gave him a questioning look.

"Dude, I'm fine." Stiles waved him off.

The lights were low downstairs. The fire banked to a low crackling burn. Upstairs Scott could hear the sound of slow breathing and steady heartbeats, the sound of people at rest. There was nothing downstairs. It was deathly quiet, save for the occasional crumbling of burning wood. The door at the end of the hall was innocuous and bland, as if it were any other doorway. Stiles leaned against the wall while Scott stood in front of it, questioning his obsessive need to see what lay beyond it. It wasn't just the scent. It was that cry he'd heard. Animal panic and desperation. Something trapped down there that shouldn't be trapped. The part of him that was wolf lamented at that call, lamented at anything caged that should have been wild and free. Even if it was a rampaging monster?

Maybe not. But he needed to see, just the same.

"What are we doing here?" Stiles urged momentum one way or another.

Scott swallowed and put his hand on the knob. It was locked, predictably. He took a breath and twisted the knob, a sharp jerk of the wrist that snapped the lock and the door swung open.

"That's just great. They won't notice that," Stiles muttered under his breath, then crowded close in behind Scott to see what lay beyond.

It was stairs. Leading down into darkness. He fumbled for a light switch, even his sensitized wolf vision unable penetrate the shadows at the deepest portion. He found a switch and bulbs flickered on. One at the top of the stairwell, one at the bottom. Stiles pulled the door shut behind them and followed him down. Twenty steps to the bottom, where the passage was rough, like it was hewn out of stone. A long, stone passage with a few bands of electrical piping running along the bottom of the wall, with light bulbs sporadically placed, throwing the passage into weird patches of shadow. And cold. The cold you'd expect under an earth covered in December snow. He could practically hear Stiles fighting to keep his teeth from chattering half way down the passage.

"This is a bad idea. A bad, bad idea - -" he was muttering. "How far does this thing go?"

Not that much further. Scott could smell the sudden flare of warmth, the sudden awareness of open space beyond the last patch of light. The onslaught of scent that had been building and building all the walk down the passage and hit him like a slap to the face when they stepped out of the passage and into the chamber at the end of it.

Something screamed in the darkness and a weight impacted metal and stone. Stiles yelped and scrambled backwards, staring blindly into shadows that Scott was only just beginning to make out. Cage doors. Thick bars of welded iron and steel driven into walls of stone. Three separate enclosures, the depths of which were shrouded in darkness.

A shape, large and black hit the bars of the one in the middle and Scott flinched back against Stiles.

"Oh my God. Oh my God," Stiles was clutching at his shirtsleeve. "Is that it? That _is_ it."

Scott took a breath, forcing the claws that had come out back into obscurity. He shook his head, frowning. "I don't think so. Not the same one at any rate. It smells - - different."

He took a step forward and Stiles made a miserable sound behind him. The thing had retreated back into the shadows, nothing more than a shadow itself. Not as large as the first one, though, he thought, though it was still larger by far than a man or a man shaped wolf. It half crouched, eyes glowing amber in the darkness, the smell of its anger - - of its hatred of the bars that caged it - - acrid in the air. Almost he thought he saw a gleam of dull metal around its neck. A collar.

Stiles edged up behind him and held up his phone, snapping a picture. In the flare of the flash the thing exploded, rushing the bars again in a manic fury, claws as long as Scott's forearm wrist to elbow digging furrows in the stone floor. They both scrambled backwards, half falling over each other in their efforts to distance themselves from the beast.

"Holy fuck, dude. What is that thing?" Stiles was clutching at his arm so hard his nails were breaking skin.

"I don't know. I thought - - I thought - -" he'd half thought maybe there might be something like him, buried beneath the animal surface. Some shape shifter beyond his ken that still held a shred of humanity. But there was nothing in this things eyes that even suggested higher intelligence.

The chamber was suddenly illuminated by the stark yellow of fluorescents. The black beast shrieked and flung itself into the furthest corner of its cage. Scott spun, dragging Stiles with him, vision still swimming from the onslaught of light.

"Crap. We're screwed," Stiles was muttering, even as men crowded into the chamber, several from an entrance on the far side and another few in the wake of Julian Dupont, who stopped a few feet into the room and shook his head sadly. The gun in his hand, the multiple guns in the hands of his men, belied any real regret.

"I offer you the hospitality of my home and this is the gratitude I'm shown? Truly unfortunate that you decided to test my patience, boys, because I can assure you, I take my personal privacy very, very seriously."


	5. Chapter 5

5

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Stiles was muttering next to Scott, turning this way and that taking in the no less than five guns pointed at them. Held by five guys with really pitiless looks on their faces.

"We can explain this - - we can so explain this," Stiles was babbling in a panic, claiming things that they in no way could do. There wasn't an explanation, save sheer stupidity on his part for insisting on coming down here. If they got of it in once piece he'd humbly take whatever bitching Stiles decided to dole out.

"Can you?" Dupont arched a brow, not amused.

"There was a noise and the door was open - -" Stiles was snatching at air, his heart pounding so hard and fast it sounded as if he might faint at any given moment.

"It was not," Dupont said flatly.

Stiles looked at Scott in overt panic, and just standing next to him when he was fairly exploding with nerves was making Scott's pulse race.

"Yeah? Well - - you're keeping a monster in your basement. And that's not a bear."

Scott caught his sleeve, wanting him to shut up, wanting to figure a way out of here that didn't involve Dupont and his men shooting at them, because as painful a getting shot was for him, he'd heal. Stiles wouldn't.

Dupont stared at them, inscrutable expression on his face. He was dressed haphazardly, shirt untucked and half buttoned, as if he'd been roused from bed to rush down here. Most of the men accompanying him were as well, which made Scott think maybe they'd tripped some alarm on the way down.

"No, it is not a bear." Dupont conceded, finally holstering his gun. None of his men lowered their weapons. He waved a hand towards the cage, where the thing crouched in the furthest corner, as if the light was painful to it. Or it was cowering in the presence of Dupont. Terrified of a single man. Almost Scott could smell the fear radiating off it, focused like a laser on one man. What Dupont might have done to it, to trigger such a reaction was - - unsettling.

"But it does originate in Russia," Dupont was saying. "Back when Russia was still Russia. It's called a vanago. Particularly nasty. Particularly rare. Most of them were killed off during the Bolshevik wars. Ironic since the revolutions were the primary cause of their creation. It was a miserable time and miserable times tend to spawn miserable people. Legend has it, that a group of Russian soldiers came upon a family of Polish gypsies and slaughtered them in the most creative of ways - - save for one survivor, who placed a curse upon them with her dying breath. Turning them into the mindless beasts they had proven themselves to be. This is the last one. The last of its kind. "

Scott exchanged a wary look with Stiles, neither one of them comfortable with the sudden willingness to share.

"Really? A gypsy curse? That's a little cliché," Stiles scoffed, his go to reaction to taut strung nerves to open his mouth and let anything that crossed his mind flow out unchecked. Scott contained the urge to elbow him.

Dupont lifted a brow. "You doubt the possibility of vengeance taking such a path?"

Stiles opened his mouth. Shut it for a second then muttered. "No. I can totally buy it."

"The last of its kind? Not including the one you killed?" Scott asked.

The dead calm in Dupont's eyes was freaking him out a little. There was nothing in any of these men's eyes that suggested they'd hesitate to gun them down. He could almost taste it in the air, the grim calm of men that had killed and would kill again. If there weren't guns pointing at them from both sides, he'd have tried to edge in front of Stiles and give him that little bit of protection.

"You noticed that, did you?" Dupont inclined his head marginally, a faint smile touching his mouth. "Was it the scent?"

Scott took a panicked breath, forced himself to slow his breathing and shook his head negatively. "Its just - - smaller."

"Yes, it is. There was a woman among the Bolsheviks. A camp whore that followed them and participated in the slaughter. The only female vanago. Smaller yes, but no less vicious. More so, being female. She's grown wily and cunning over the years. It took me two years to trap her. But it was worth it, rare as she is."

"And you just keep it down here?" Stiles asked. "For what? Shits and giggles?"

"Until someone pays me the price of a hunt. And for a creature that's the last of its kind - - that will be a hefty price indeed."

"A hunt?" Stiles asked warily and the bottom dropped out of Scott's stomach. The thing they'd killed in the woods - -the vanago - - hadn't been a beast they'd been trying to stop from a rampage, it had been prey. Sport for them to chase it down and slaughter it.

Dupont smiled, not bothering to answer. "I think you've seen enough down here."

He jerked his head and the men behind them moved forward, urging them towards Dupont with flicks of the rifles they carried. Stiles cast Scott a worried glance and started moving. Dupont stepped forward, a hand on Scott's chest stalling his forward momentum.

"A moment," Dupont said.

Scott stared down at the offending hand, clenching his fists. Stiles looked back at him, immersed in the group of Dupont's men where they'd stopped, not far from the entrance to the passage leading out.

"Funny thing," Dupont said casually. "The vanago has distinctive blood. Once shed, it dries almost instantly. Turns to powdery ash. And yet, the blood inside the Hummer the night you were attacked was fresh. Which leads me to believe that your claim that you weren't, at the very least, scratched by it, was a lie. Why would you lie about such a thing, Scott?"

"I didn't," Scott said softly.

"Yeah, that's crazy. Why would he lie?" Stiles echoed.

"So, just the bruises then, from when it hit you?"

Scott swallowed, feeling himself falling deeper and deeper into the quicksand. He nodded slowly, trying not to look at Stiles, who was attempting to subtly mouth 'no. no.' As if Scott didn't' realize the trap he was walking into.

"I'd like to see them, if you don't mind."

"And if he does?" Stiles countered. One of the guys surrounding him, the big mechanic from the garage, grabbed his collar and shook him for the outburst.

Scott narrowed his eyes and looked back to Dupont. He could take this man down before he even realized Scott was making the move, but the four across the chamber with the guns on Stiles presented a more challenging problem. He couldn't cover that distance and make a dent before one of them could squeeze a trigger. Which was likely the very reason Dupont had separated them. Because Dupont _knew_. Or at the very least suspected.

"I don't think so," Scott said, meeting Dupont's eyes.

Dupont lifted a brow. "Don't be shy. Let me see how lucky you were to survive with a few scrapes and bruises."

Scott clenched his jaw, glaring at Dupont from under his lashes.

Dupont gave him half a minute before he calmly directed. "Shoot the boy in the head."

"What? Wait, wait - -" Stiles stood there, caught in the grip of guys half again his weight, skin going pale as the muzzle of a gun was shoved under his jaw.

"Okay. Okay," Scott held up both hands in desperation.

"Now," Dupont snapped and this time the cool boredom evaporated from his voice, replaced by the ironclad command of a man used to getting his way.

Stiles had his eyes shut, the gun digging into his jaw forcing his head back. There was no way out save compliance. Scott yanked his shirt off, stood there with it clenched in his fists while Dupont circled him, seeing exactly what Dupont had suspected he'd see. Unmarred skin. He flinched when fingers grazed his back, but endured it.

He had to concentrate to keep his claws from popping when Dupont dug his fingers into his hair and jerked his head back, leaning in close from behind to hiss in his ear. "Did you think I was a fool not to know when a wolf was under my own roof?"

"We didn't ask to come here," he ground out. He just wanted him to back off, to give him a little distance, because the feel of the man against his back was making his skin crawl and his vision tunnel.

Dupont patted his shoulder, eased back, circling again, one hand on the butt of his holstered gun.

"If you two hadn't been so eager to trespass in places you had no business being, I honestly wouldn't have cared if you had tainted blood or not. Wolves are a dime a dozen. Not worth the time and effort to hunt down."

"Then we're good, then?" Stiles said, sounding a little strangled, a little desperate with a gun still jammed under his chin. "No need to finish with the Jeep. We can walk."

"Julian," Jan Dupont oozed up from the shadows of the passage leading up to the lodge. How long she'd been there, Scott had no idea. His attention had been firmly elsewhere. "These are two _boys_ who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And youth tends towards inquisitiveness. Young men. Young wolves."

"Exactly," Stiles jumped to second that opinion. She slid up next to him and eased the muzzle of the gun down from his jaw, brushing her fingertips along the crescent shaped mark left behind.

"They don't always think before they act," she said and Stiles was nodding, latching on to any hint of an ally.

Scott wasn't so sure that's what she was. She moved like she was on the prowl and her smile hadn't changed, like it was only a façade for darker things going on behind it. She made him uneasier than her brother.

"But," she said, turning to look at him. "There's something about this one - - something interesting - - call it my women's intuition."

Dupont ducked his head a little, looking Scott in the eye, gauging him. "Is there now?"

"Ask to see the color of his eyes," she purred.

Dupont canted a brow, commanding with his look. An intimidating look. An intimidating man with a lot of guns to back him up and a vulnerable shield in Stiles. Scott's options were severely limited.

"Why do you care?" Scott ground out.

"Because a beta or an omega is barely worth the time and ammunition it takes to put it down. An alpha makes for more interesting game."

"Oh my God," Stiles exclaimed. "You people are seriously twisted and my dad's in law enforcement and his is in the FBI. So if we turn up missing shit will hit the fan."

He got the back of one of his captor's fists in the face for that threat. His head snapped back, blood spurting from his mouth where teeth had likely shredded the inside of his lip. It shut him up for a second.

It made Scott start forward, growling with out even the benefit of canine cutlery, but Dupont stopped him with the muzzle of the gun he'd snatched from his holster pointed at his forehead.

"You're trying my patience."

"Screw you," he snarled, barely audible.

The scent of blood was acrid in the air. The vanago in the cage, growled, scenting it too, shifting in the shadows it had retreated to. Jan Dupont glanced that way, her smile turning speculative.

"It's a tracker, you know," she said. "A huntress with few equals. Most female beasts are more adept at it than the males. Once she has a taste of blood, she's relentless. Shall we treat her?"

She drew a knife from the belt of one of the men. With one smooth motion she grabbed Stiles' arm and sliced the blade across the soft inner skin above his wrist. Then she grabbed his shirt while he was gawking in wide eyes shock, and hauled him towards the cage. The thing within it surged forward, slamming against the bars hard enough to make the rock they were embedded in crumble a little.

"Stop," Scott screamed it, letting claws pop and fangs, every sense he had clearer and cleaner with that partial transformation. Jan let go Stiles' arm and he scrambled backwards, clutching his hand around the wound.

Dupont stood there, the gun still pointed at Scott's forehead, a faint satisfied smile on his lips.

"Young for an alpha. Very young."

"Help him," Scott growled, because Stiles fingers around the wound weren't stopping the flow and he was turning paler by the second. The smell of blood becoming overwhelming. The beast in the cage howling and throwing itself against the bars as if it had already taken the scent and targeted Stiles for the kill.

Dupont jerked his head, acquiescing and one of the guys grabbed Stiles' by the arm, hauling him towards the passage out. Dupont smiled, lowered the gun so that it was aimed dead center at his chest, and pulled the trigger. It was unexpected. A debilitating shock. The bullet tore into Scott's chest like an ironclad fist. It slammed him backwards, a fiery trail of agony seizing up his breath, his vision, his consciousness. He heard Stiles screaming, cursing incoherently, tasted the bitter tang of blood in his mouth and then there was nothing.


	6. Chapter 6

6

"You bastards. You fucking sick sons of bitches," Stiles fought against the hold on his arms. But it was a losing battle and they manhandled him down the passage away from Scott, who was sprawled on the stone floor, a gaping wound in his chest. He couldn't think, his thoughts scattering like so much confetti in a strong wind. Images kept flashing through his head. Scott's wide-eyed shock as the bullet ripped into him. The snarling, crazed face of the beast in the cage as it went wild at the scent of so much blood. His blood. Scott's blood. The smile on the face of the bitch that had cut him. Who was striding ahead of him now, night robe flapping in the weak, incandescent light of the passage.

"Calm down," Jan looked over her shoulder at him. "He's a wolf. And an alpha. He'll heal."

"He goddamned well better," Stiles growled. He'd seen Scott recover from some pretty terrible things - - but a bullet in the chest? Hell, the one in his shoulder had pretty much floored him. But then that one had been lodged in the bone. If this one had just gone into soft tissue and muscle - -like the lung or heart - no biggie, right? And how screwed up was it that that was his best-case scenario? Pretty fucking screwed up.

He felt sick. Lightheaded and nauseous. But maybe that was as much from blood loss as watching his best friend get shot point blank in the chest.

They hauled him after her into the darkened kitchen. She flipped the lights and waved a hand towards a chair at the small wooden table.

"What? You want to have a cup of coffee? A chat?" He inquired with venomous sarcasm. The guys behind him didn't take that well. He got a slap against the side of the head that made his ears ring and his vision go wavery, before he was slammed ignominiously down into the aforementioned chair.

"No," Jan turned from the cabinet she'd opened with a med kit in her hands. "I was planning on treating your wound before you bleed out."

He let out an incredulous breath. "Oh my God. You're the one that cut me!"

"I can let you just bleed, if you prefer."

He stared down at his sleeve, which was soaked to the elbow with blood, despite his death grip over the slice. His fingers were wet from it. The odds of him dying here were sort of on a steep incline, the way things were going, but he'd really rather prolong it as long as possible.

He set his jaw and extended the arm, prying his fingers away from the slash, daring a look at it, that made his stomach flip flop dangerously.

She pulled a wad of gauze and surgical stapler from the kit and his stomach gave up the acrobatics and just lurched directly up and lodged in his throat.

"Oh - - damn. You're gonna use that on me? Without anesthesia? Painkillers? Novocain? Booze?"

She didn't offer up any of those things. Just a gauze pad soaked in alcohol, which stung like a bitch when she pressed it over the gash in his arm to clean away the blood.

He couldn't watch. If he watched, one of two things was going to happen. He was going to pass out or puke. Possibly both. And it did hurt, but not as much as he imagined it would in his head. She was quick and concise with the stapler though and when he could make himself open his eyes and look again, there were six little surgical staples holding the edges of the wound together.

The fluttering in his gut subsided marginally. "It would be a lot of trouble to go to, stitching me up and all - -If you were just gonna - - oh, I dunno - -kill me later on. Right?"

She lifted a silent brow and smeared a little Neosporin on the still seeping wound, before wrapping a clean white bandage around his arm.

The silent treatment made him sort of crazy. Not knowing what the hell sort of crazy shit they'd wandered into made him want to start pulling out his hair. These people kept supernatural monsters in their basement. They knew about werewolves. They were hunters, Dupont had said as much. But were they hunters like Allison's family, or something else? "That thing down there - -the thing you guys killed out in the woods. Are you guys hunters - -like the Argents?"

He had to sort of assume that there couldn't be that many hunters of supernatural game out there. They were bound to travel in the same circles. It made sense.

Jan lifted a surprised brow and laughed. "The Argents? My, my, you are full of surprises, aren't you? No, not like the Argents. They're ideologues for the most part, on a crusade to protect the cowering, ignorant masses from the shadow things that prey upon them. My brother for the sport of it. For the satisfaction of taking down the most dangerous of big game. I do it for the profit."

She sat back, staring at him critically. "Do you know how much we were paid to allow a pair of Wall Street tycoons the opportunity to hunt down and kill an endangered species most of the world doesn't even realize exists?"

"A lot, I'm guessing."

"Yes. Quite a lot."

He swallowed. "So in other words, you're sort of like assassins. People pay you money and you help them murder things they wouldn't have a chance of taking down on their own."

She lifted a brow in what might have been amusement. It was hard to tell. "Murder is what you do to human beings. Beasts, you just put down."

"Yeah? What are you planning to do with us then?" His hands were shaking. It hurt a little to clench the fist of the injured arm, but he did it anyway to stop the trembling.

She canted her head. "You present a bit of dilemma, Stiles. I don't like killing teenage boys, even suicidally curious ones. Scott's less of a problem. He lost his right to humanity the moment he was infected. He was bitten, I assume and not born to it?"

Stiles stared at her, appalled. "That's bullshit and I've heard it before from batshit crazy assholes trying to justify murder - - just like you."

The big guy behind him apparently didn't like the tone of disrespect and clamped a hand down on his shoulder, fingers digging in painfully.

Jan tsked and waved a finger and the pressure let up. Stiles drew in a shaky breath, rubbing at the spot.

"Don't worry, my brother's a sportsman. He'll give him a fighting chance."

_God._ He stared at her, realization sinking in. "He's going to _hunt _him?"

She rose, and her men hauled Stiles up to his feet. She grabbed a 12 ounce plastic bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator and tossed it at him. He fumbled to catch it reflexively. "You've lost a lot of blood. Drink that."

"Oh my God, answer me. Is he going to try and hunt Scott?" The hold on his arms tightened when he tried to lunge towards her.

She didn't seem concerned with his horrified anger. "He's not going to try, my dear, he's going to succeed. He always does."

Scott came awake with a flicker of ghost pain in his chest, his mind insisting that there'd been a hole in his body that damn well ought to hurt, even though his body had gotten over the issue and efficiently repaired the damage. A year of miraculous, supernatural healing ability did not trump sixteen years of dealing with injury and pain the old fashioned way and sometimes it took his head a while to catch up with his body.

He was cold. There was no enhanced aspect of his werewolf metabolism that kept him from feeling the acute sting of cold. He shivered, feeling for a hole that wasn't there in the middle of his chest, fingers loosening flakes of dried blood, which meant it had been a while since he'd been shot.

He'd been shot. That terrifying fact bounced around inside his head for a moment, chasing away the last vestiges of fogginess clouding his awareness. He pushed himself up off the cold grate of a floor and banged the back of his head against unforgiving metal. He went back down to elbows and knees, seeing momentary stars in the darkness. He took a breath and let his vision adjust to the shadows.

It was a cage. A stark, rectangular cage maybe six feet long and four feet high, a little less than that wide, constructed of sturdy iron bars that looked like they might withstand something very strong adamantly trying to escape. He sat there, extending his senses, searching out familiar scents, familiar sounds - - any sounds that might give him a clue what to expect. He couldn't scent Stiles. He couldn't track the thud of his heart or the rush of his blood and that sent him into a little rolling slide of panic, until he talked himself down off it, reasoning that if he were underground still, and Stiles wasn't, with layers of earth and rock between them, even keen werewolf hearing couldn't pierce that veil.

And the earth smell, the sense of heaviness overhead, the overwhelming sense of sound being muffled by insulating earth suggested that he was most certainly still underground. But not the place he had been. Not the chamber with the rock hewn enclosures where the vanago had been.

He eased forward, grasping the bars at the front of the cage, quietly testing their strength. The latch didn't give with a casual application of force, so he clenched his jaw and put more effort into it. Metal strained, but refused to break. He blew out a frustrated breath, pushing back the panic that wanted to swell up and take charge, drew back and slammed a shoulder against the door. Metal grated this time, giving just a little. He drew back again and the world exploded in a screeching jolt of agony.

Current flooded the cage, electrifying the bars, the grate upon which he crouched. Muscles contracted, violent protest against the surge of current surging through him and flung him backwards. The electricity seared through his nervous system with pulses of pure unrelenting pain. He screamed, arching backwards, helpless to escape it, even though every primal instinct he had roared in affront.

It stopped and he lay there, shuddering, panting, claws digging weakly at the grate he lay on, sight surging from white spots around the edges to that red tinged tunnel vision that came upon him when the beast inside came closer to the surface than was safe for him or anyone around him.

He heard the footsteps. Smelled the scent of cloying cigar smoke and gunpowder, the distinct odor of burned flesh. His own maybe, from the intensity of the current that had ravaged him.

"I know a thing or two about wolves," Dupont stood outside the cage, staring down. "How to draw them out. How to contain them."

Another shudder ran through him, an after effect of the shock. Scott curled his fingers around the grate, pushing himself up, back against the bars. The electricity had brought out the wolf in him, he willed it away, refusing to play the animal in the cage for the bastard.

"Where's Stiles?"

Dupont crouched, to look him in the eye. "You'd be better served to worry about yourself."

"I will tear you apart if you hurt him." He growled the threat, low and furious.

"Is that the wolf talking?"

"No. It's the friend."

Dupont did smile then, but it was cold and apathetic. He fingered a small remote control and Scott eyed it warily.

"It's been close to a decade since I hunted a wolf," he commented, like he was remarking on the weather. "I prefer rarer game. But there's always a challenge stalking something with human intelligence."

Scott widened his eyes, appalled at that casual bloodthirsty, declaration. "You mean murdering some_one_?"

Dupont lifted a brow and rose, circling the cage. Scott shifted, not wanting his back to the man.

"Murder is such a regrettable word. I prefer to think of it as ridding the world of one more predator. And don't claim you've never had blood on your hands. I've seen the color of your eyes."

Scott curled a hand around the bars at his side, not willing to argue that point. Doubting it would matter even if he did. "What about Stiles? He's human."

"Yes. Now that will be murder. Unfortunate."

He lowered his lashes, hiding the surge of color that burned behind his eyes, the surge of adrenalin that came with fury. If he could break the door of the cage before the electricity debilitated him - -

He made the move, throwing his shoulder against the cage door. Current rippled through the metal, tearing into him like a thousand little bullets. The cage door gave, but it was too late, the broken lock not hindering the electricity that had him writhing on the grate at the bottom of the cage.

The voltage amped up, shorting out synapses and frying nerve endings and the world went from blinding white to black.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Stiles slammed his fist into the door of the room they'd shoved him into. A small, windowless room on the first floor. A storage room that doubled as a break room for the staff maybe, because it had a cot and a few shelves filled with cleaning supplies. He pounded the door again, hurling hollow threats. No one on the other side bothered to respond. If there was even anyone on the other side to hear. He pressed his ear to the door, but plain old human hearing wasn't so good at picking up little things like heartbeats or the soft whisper of breath. If somebody was standing guard outside, he couldn't tell.

He hissed through his teeth in frustration and hit it one more time, adding in a kick for good measure. The door was unimpressed with his show of bravado. A faint wash of dizziness assaulted him - - blood loss, panic, one too many slaps against the side of the head - who knew. The wood of the door was cool against his forehead when he leaned against it, breathing. Just breathing and trying to calm the rush of chaotic thoughts that wanted to send him into a tailspin of panic.

He needed to think. He didn't have super human strength or speed or ferocity. What he did have was an agile mind and a good imagination and if he could just fight past his body wanting to crumple into a ball on the floor, he could try and figure out a way out of this. A way that didn't involve him getting his throat sliced out of hand and Scott getting gunned down like an animal and the both of them ending up in shallow graves somewhere. That image skittered across his mind way too vividly and he had shut his eyes and ordered it away.

He slid down the door to the floor and sprawled there, head spinning. The orange juice Jan Dupont had tossed at him was still clenched in his hand. He twisted the cap off and took a long swig, figuring it couldn't hurt. He finished it off and sat there, going over his options. He was outnumbered and out gunned, in the middle of nowhere, fifty miles from anything resembling civilization with no phone and nobody that would start to miss him and Scott for at least a week. His dad knew him well enough to figure he'd forget to check in like he'd promised. Then again, if his dad tried to call and couldn't get through, after a few days he might start to worry. Please let him start to worry.

Stiles fished his cell out of his pocket on the off chance that it had miraculously decided to pick up a signal again. It hadn't. And they probably knew it hadn't, which was why they hadn't bothered to relieve him of it. He shoved it back into his pocket, then hesitated, thinking what else they hadn't relieved him of. His pocketknife.

With a surge of excitement, he dug it out. It wasn't that big of a blade, good enough to dig bullets out of werewolves, but not much of a weapon when it came to taking on guys with guns and bowie knives. But it was something. And sitting there holding the little three inch knife in his hands made him feel a trickle of confidence.

He wasn't sure if he could follow through if it came to plunging a blade into somebody's flesh - - but he liked to think if it came down to his life - - to Scott's life - - that he'd rise to the occasion. Of course that was presupposing that he got the chance to do something other than rot in this room.

"Think. Think," he ordered himself. But wanting to come up with a brilliant plan and actually coming up with one, were two distinctly different things. He slammed the back of his head against the door a few times in frustration, clenching his fist around the knife.

He sat there a long blank moment, feeling helpless, hopeless. That fear he'd been trying to ignore, trying not to let creep up and overwhelm him that there was no way out of this, rearing its ugly head. That Scott was dead and he was dead and any bit of miraculous good luck karma had stored up for them had been long depleted. God knew he'd used his fair share and then some, having survived this long since the wolves had come back to town.

He took a shuddery breath, rolling his head to the side, staring at the cracked paint on the doorjamb and the hinges.

The hinges. The bottom one of which had a pin that had worked itself a little ways up out of the bracket. He looked back at the knife blade in his hand. He let out a desperate exhalation of air, snared by the grip of sudden inspiration.

Scott found waking up harder this time than it had been the last. It felt like he was in a cocoon, insulated from the world, sound, scent, touch all distant, hazy things. When he did open his eyes, vision wavered, like he was seeing everything through a filter of rippling water. The ground was moving under him and it took a while for him to come to the realization that it wasn't the ground, it was him, being dragged. Two men on either side of him, hauling him across ground. He thought at first it went pitch black in places, but no - - that was just him, drifting in and out of consciousness. Head too heavy to hold upright, limbs too leaden to struggle against the holds they had on him.

There was no pain. Just lethargy. Like he'd been drugged. It occurred to him, in a moment of fleeting clarity, that maybe he had. And the flicker of panic over that possibility gave him enough of an adrenalin rush to lift his head, to focus his vision as the cold air of night hit him.

Trees. Trees and snow. The trees grey silhouettes in a darkness that was eerily illuminated by the glow of a moon one night past full. They threw him down and he hit the ground and lay there, cold eating into his back, vision of that moon going in and out of focus.

"Are you sure about this, Dupont?" Someone asked.

There were feet. The movement of bodies. The scent of gun oils and tobacco and the stringent smell of cologne covering human sweat.

"He doesn't look like a monster."

"He doesn't, does he? But we can change that."

A face came into view, blocking his view of the moon, pale hair, faint line of a jagged scar. A hand grasping his jaw, fingers clenching hurtfully, forcing him to focus.

"Listen to me, Scott. The midazolam won't keep you down for long. Your metabolism should kick it out of your system in twenty or thirty minutes and I'll give you that long, before I come after you. Do you understand?"

He didn't want to understand. Didn't want to comprehend the mindset of the sort of men who hunted others for sport. But he did. It wasn't like it was the first time he'd stared into the eyes of another human being who possessed no compunction whatsoever to putting a bullet in his head.

He nodded and Dupont smiled, then looked over his shoulder. The pair of old men from the lodge stood there, dressed in heavy coats and hats, with rifles strapped to their shoulders. Worried looking old men, who had to wonder what sort of hunt Dupont was taking them on. Please God, let them be men who might just balk at plain murder.

Dupont drew his attention back, a syringe in his hand. He held it up and the moonlight glinted off the faint lilac colored liquid contained within.

"If you've never seen a werewolf, gentlemen, you're about to get a treat." Then he plunged the needle into Scott's neck, right into the big vein.

It was like a liquid jolt of fire hitting his bloodstream. He arched off the ground, muscles contracting, head exploding with a throbbing rush of blood and pain and vertigo. He screamed and it came out a growling cry of animalistic pain. The transformation rushed up at him, forced upon him by the torrent of acid in his veins. He had no more control over it than he'd had when he was newly changed and at the mercy of the full moon.

He writhed, the pain eating at him from the inside, the wolfsbane - - it had to be wolfsbane - - pumping through his veins, turning everything red around the edges. Between the various mixture of drugs in his system rational thought ebbed and irrational surged, animal instinct pushing human reasoning to the background. Pain induced adrenalin trumped the sedative trying to keep him down. Claws dug into the hard December earth, fangs gnashed, biting his own tongue, flooding his mouth with blood. He rolled to his knees, away from Dupont, snarling.

The men scattered backwards from him, exclaiming softly, all except for Dupont, who casually stood, one hand on his side arm, staring down.

"Wolfsbane," he explained to his hunting party. "A particularly rare variety that draws out the beast, without fatally poisoning it. I'm told it's not particularly pleasant for them to endure. But then it makes for a better hunt if the prey is desperate."

He smiled and all Scott could think about was lunging up and tearing out his throat. He could hear the rush of blood under thin skin. Could hear the rush of all their pulses, all their frantic heartbeats. Could smell the fear, the excitement, the lust in the air. If his limbs had been anything but watery and weak he might have done it and to hell with the blood on his hands. Blood on his hands. Blood. He couldn't hold onto anything but instinct and pain, everything else bleeding out of him in red tinged madness.

"You've got ten minutes," Dupont said. He pulled the gun and aimed it at Scott's head. "The next time I shoot you, it will be in the head. And even an alpha doesn't heal from a few well-placed bullets in the brain. I'd run, if I were you."

It took Stiles fifteen minutes to pry the first pin out of the hinge. The second one, longer, the end cap so old it was rusted on to the pin. But he got it loose. By the time he got the last one, he was sweating and he'd torn a nail half off in his attempts to twist the last one free. He stood there, with his ear to the door, straining to hear if there was movement in the hall outside. The last thing he needed was to have gone to all this trouble, only to work the door loose and walk right into some goon with a gun. Hell, a girl with an espresso machine would raise enough of an alarm to royally fuck up his plans. Not that his plans were particularly well formulated or thought out. At the moment, his main focus was pretty much getting out of this room, finding Scott and getting the hell out of here. All of which sounded fantastic in theory, but which the practice of might prove bothersome.

There was nothing but dead silence through the door. If there was a guard out there, he wasn't moving, or he was asleep. Stiles watch read 2:17 so chances were, anyone not actively involved in kidnapping and or the hunting down of werewolves, was most likely snugly in bed. He took a breath and slipped the knife in between the door and the jamb, prying it out from separated hinges. Almost it didn't want to give, and for a moment he stood there, cursing, thinking he'd done it all for nothing, then something shifted and it gave way.

He eased it inwards just enough to get a view of the hall outside. Nothing. Encouraged he slid outside, carefully setting the door back in place in his wake. It was only a few doors down from the kitchen to the end of the hall and the entrance to the basement. Monsters in cages that way lay, and he really, really didn't want to venture back down that dark passage. But on the other hand, if that's where Dupont kept his 'game', then maybe Scott might still be there. And as much as his heart hammered in his chest at the notion of not just finding a way out and running like hell - - he couldn't leave Scott.

Clutching his little knife in hand, he gathered courage and edged down the hall. He stopped with his back to the wall by the kitchen doorway, listening for the sounds of anyone inside. Again. There was nothing. There was nothing between him and the basement door then. The lock Scott had mangled gave way and he preyed that they'd been a little too busy to reset the alarm systems he and Scott had tripped the first time they'd gone down.

Sneakers were excellent for cat footing it down a passageway hacked out of sheer rock. He stopped a couple of times, listening for the sound of habitation, but the place was silent as a tomb. Like he imagined it would be if he were encased in a box and buried under six feet of insulating earth. And really, he needed to stop with the morbid death scenarios, because they weren't helping his concentration.

When he reached the chamber where the three enclosures were, it was back to one lone light bulb that didn't come close to illuminating the corners or the depths of the cages. It was empty. Just a few fresh bloodstains on the floor. Scott's blood in the center of it, and a spattering trail of his own leading back down the passage.

The passage on the opposite side of the room was unlit and led who the hell knew where. Maybe another way out, since guys had appeared from it when Dupont had surprised them earlier. He let out a breath of pent up tension, moving out to the center of the floor where Scott had fallen. Crouching down and lying fingertips in blood that hadn't entirely dried, it occurred to him, with this grip like an iron fist around his heart, that what if Scott were already dead? What if that bullet had hit some crazy, vulnerable spot, had lodged in some pesky bone again and all that miraculous werewolf healing of his hadn't been enough to spit it back out.

_Oh, God. God_ - - he was back on the morbid track and he couldn't help it. Because _not_ thinking the worst was the delusional part - - since any rational assumption - - when you saw your best friend get shot dead center in the chest and go down with a blossoming hole in the center of his body - - was that he wasn't getting back up.

"Not helping, so stop it." He berated himself for the pessimism, even though pessimism seemed a very reasonable response for this situation. He stood, throwing out his arms in a moment of frustration, and something growled, deep in the shadows of the middle cage.

"Crap," he whispered, and took a cautious step backwards.

It was like retreat triggered some primal instinct to attack, for the thing in the cage exploded in a sudden snarling rage, rushing out of the gloom and hurling itself against the bars of the cage.

Stiles yelped - - there was no helping it - - and scrambled backwards.

"Holy shit." He pressed his back to the wall, while the thing in the cage rattled the bars and growled in impotent fury at him.

Okay then, the thing had serious issues with him. The sort of issues that might result in it tearing through bars as thick as his wrist and promptly eating him. So the rational thing to do was get up and get the hell out of there before that unfortunate scenario came to pass.

He made it to the mouth of the passage leading back when he saw the approach of men on their way down it. He cursed under his breath and flung himself back against the wall. For a panicked second, he floundered, caught between an abomination and a hard place. The far passage was the only option. He sprinted across the chamber while the thing in the cage was roaring and rattling bars. There was a door about twenty feet down and if it was locked, he was screwed.

For once, luck was with him. It was unlocked and he slipped through, closing it behind him. Another rough-hewn passage and he took it at a sprint. And Thank God this warren, like any good rabbit hole, had more than one entrance. There were stairs eventually, leading up to a hatch. He fumbled with a slide bolt and shoved one side open, bursting out into the night. He took a breathless second to take stock of his surroundings. Trees, trees and more tress, although he doubted he could be that far from the lodge. In the woods just outside it probably.

In the snowy, miserably cold woods. The breath clouded up before his face, a wonderful testament to just how cold. And him without a jacket. Without a working cell phone. Without any clue where Scott was, or even if Scott were still alive. And the place was rife with guys with guns. Oh, and lest he forget there was a supernatural hunter/killer beast that didn't seem to like the way he smelled, losing its mind in the basement.

Fantastic. Life couldn't get better.

He needed just a little bit of an advantage, other than a pocketknife. He needed not to be running through the woods like an idiot. The garage. If he could get to the garage, maybe he could find something there more helpful than a tiny little pocketknife. Maybe he could even find a working phone or better yet the keys to a vehicle that wasn't bashed to hell.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Scott ran. Blind flight through the forest. A staggering, desperate course at first, the sedative still dampening his strength, clogging his head. But each step lessened the effect, each breath and the strength flooded back. His head was another matter. The midazolam had nothing to do with the red around the edges of his vision or the overwhelming impact of sound, scent, sheer primal instinct that rushed in, latching hold of human rational and shredding it with razor sharp teeth. That was all wolf, surging to the surface at the behest of the wolfsbane, while the other part of him sank down, writhing in the grip of the poison, barely cognizant.

So he ran. The cold was a distant discomfort that the wolf in him ignored and the human was too remote to complain of. Trees and rocks and snow that went on forever. Darkness that shifted from moonlit grey to deeper black as the clouds moved en masse across the waning moon.

He paused in a patch of utter pitch, back against the cold rock of a gully, his own breath, his own heartbeat rushing in his ears. What was he doing? Where was he going? Vital questions and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around them. The here and now being more important when the wolf took over than the things that might come after.

_Think. Think. Think._ He snarled, digging fingers in his hair, the more evolved part of him desperately fighting to breach the surface. If he ran like an animal, they'd kill him like one. He needed to stop and reason and think. But it was like swimming through tar, red tinged, thick tar that wanted to suck him down. He crouched, clawing at his scalp, sucking in desperate gulps of air.

He knew this feeling. He _knew it_ - - that mindless primal urge to run wild, to rend, to tear, to hunt - - but never this strong. Never so overpowering after those first few full moons, that he hadn't been able to stomp it down and take control of it. Find an anchor, that struggling part of him cried in desperation. Find something to latch onto to fight back the drug and hold the wolf at bay.

Allison. Allison. Her smile, her laugh. The scent of her hair. Her white, white neck tilted back, Isaac's lips at the sensitive juncture between jaw and jugular. Isaac's hands on her breasts, pressing into petal soft flesh. Her big brown eyes staring at him, while Isaac bent over her. Her nails tearing out his insides, ripping him to shreds. Her impassive face, her hunter's face staring down while he bled and he didn't understand why.

He screamed, a ragged cry of frustration/fury/pain and launched himself into motion.

And a bullet took him in the side. He heard the crack of the gun as the metal tore through his flesh, the echo of the shot reverberating through the trees, masking the direction from which it had been fired. The impact knocked him off his feet, and he rolled with it, coming up out of the fall on all fours, taking a precious second to shake off the burning pain, before he pushed himself up and darted into the darkest part of the shadows. Another shot and this time he was paying attention, and hurled himself off his current path and the bullet whizzed harmlessly by.

Lights flared in front of him, blinding him with their intensity after so long in the dark. He threw up a hand, nothing but white spots where vision ought to be and did the unexpected. Did what no wolf, overwhelmed by animal instinct would have - -he launched himself towards the light instead of away, deviating from the path they were trying to drive him. Relied on instinct alone to hurl himself into their midst, coming down on the hood of an open topped Jeep. His other senses were so heightened, he didn't need plain vision to know where they were. Scent and hearing and instinct were more than enough to tear into them. He ripped a gun out of a hand, and shoved the wielder out of the vehicle with enough force to send him hurtling into the trees. Slashed his claws across the chest of another, rending cloth and flesh, and the man screamed, scrambling backwards, over the seats, fear and sweat and blood, the smell of urine as he peed himself in sheer terror. The beast in him reacted, the fear driving the last tendrils of rationality out of his head and all he wanted to do was rend and tear.

The only thing that kept him from ripping out the man's throat was a bullet slamming through his arm and the roar of an approaching engine. More shots whizzed through the darkness around him, ricocheting off the side of the vehicle he crouched upon. He took off, running full out into the night. Not in the direction they wanted him to run. But back the way he'd come. In the direction of the lodge that they were not so subtly trying to drive him away from.

# # #

Stiles had no sense of direction. It was a painful thing to admit, but Stiles liked to think he could be brutally honest with himself when the need arose. And right now, in the middle of a forest with a lot of trees and a lot of snow and the clouds covering any semblance of stars that might give someone who had read a thing or two about charting direction from heavenly objects, a clue as to where they were - - he was lost.

The only thing he could figure, after tromping through the woods, freezing his ass off, was that he must have headed in the wrong direction when he'd taken off from the hatch. Instead of heading back towards the lodge and the garage, he must have headed deeper into the wilderness. A wilderness that might go on for miles and miles and miles without break. The people after him might not even need to track him down, if he got lost in the snowy Northern California wilds and subsequently starved or froze to death.

With his luck, _probably_ both.

He stomped his feet, pausing to blow warm breath into his cupped hands. His toes felt numb. The skin of his face did, and he'd seen pictures of people with noses that had to be amputated because of frostbite. He pressed his newly warmed palm over his own, very much wishing not to be among that number, and kept walking. Then stopped, frozen in his tracks when the sound of distant gunshots rippled through the forest.

It was too dark to see much of anything, but he peered into the woods regardless, not sure which direction the shots had come from. He stood there, heartbeat racing, thinking the only reasonable thing. That if they were shooting and they weren't shooting at him, then they were shooting at Scott. Which brought on a whole rush of conflicting emotions, because on the one hand they were _shooting_ at Scott, but on the other - - Scott was alive to be shot at. Dread and elation sort of waged a tug of war in his chest.

Then came the dilemma of should he head towards the gunshots or away from them, like any reasonable person.

He stood there at odds with himself, until common sense got trumped by whatever the hell screwed up character flaw it was that made him sometimes run towards trouble instead of screaming in the other direction. Maybe Scott was contagious.

"Aw, fuck - -" he threw out his hands, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity and started off in the direction he thought the gunshots had come from.

Of course he had no idea where he was going. Once the sound of them had faded, that whole problem of all the trees looking exactly alike, and going on forever came back to bite him in the ass. He came to a rocky incline and little stream that looked at least hip deep and decided walking around in wet jeans in the snow would not be to his benefit, and turned back up the slope.

Which was about the time the hairs on the back of his neck, arms and pretty much every other surface of his body stood up at attention. That shivery feeling of not being alone. Not just not alone, but not alone with something dangerous. And really, he'd been face to face with enough dangerous things that he ought to have a degree in it.

He hissed through his teeth and spun around, trying to spy something in the shadows. And there, the glint of red in the darkness, the low growl of a predator - -

He dug in his pocket for the Swiss army knife, fumbling to get the blade out. Then stood there, gaping, when Scott slunk out of the shadows like a wraith. A wolfed out Scott, granted, but still the likely the welcomest thing he'd ever seen.

"Oh my God, you scared the shit out of - -"

"Run - - now," Scott cut him off, low voiced and growley like he was having trouble with his words. Eyes full on neon red, claw tipped hands curling. There was blood on the fingers of the right one. Blood smearing his left side, that had run down and soaked the waist of his jeans, blood on his arm, though there were no visible wounds left.

"What? Why?" He started forward and Scott hissed through very impressive canines.

"Stiles - - Go. I can't - - I can't stop - - I can't - - think - -"

And he got it. Sort of got it. It wasn't the first time he'd seen bloodlust in Scott's eyes. Not the first time he'd seen the very real desire to tear his throat out cross Scott's face. It never got old and it never got anything less than terrifying. Only it had been a long time since he'd seen Scott lose control. If Scott was good at anything, it was at maintaining that grip on his wild side, of leashing in the casual ferocity that most of the wolves Stiles' knew could barely contain just walking around in their human forms. And it wasn't even a full moon. Which meant something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

"Oh - - fuck me - -" He took a step backwards, hands held up placatingly before him. As if you could placate a werewolf who'd lost his hold on sanity. Mostly what you could do was run in those cases.

"Scott, dude - - you need to get a grip - - "

Scott slid forward, the easy, rolling gait of something stalking something else. And Stile knew in his bones that if he actually did what Scott had suggested and turned tail and ran, Scott would be on him before he could take ten steps. He wouldn't be able to help himself.

"Scott - - you don't want to eat me. You'd never forgive yourself if you ate me. What happened to you? What's making you wolf out like this?"

Get him talking. Get him thinking, because Scott in full predator mode didn't carry on conversations with his prey. He just stalked it. Which Stiles knew, very, very well.

For a moment, while Scott was circling him, Stiles figured he wasn't willing or able to respond, then he clenched his hands into fists and growled. "Wolfsbane - - he injected - - some sort of - - wolfsbane - - "

"Oh - - God. That's not good. So what are we gonna do about this, huh? Because we're sort of in a situation here, y'know? And I'm not talking about you killing me - -I'm talking them killing us and I'd really like to avoid that. Well, avoid both - and whoa - - whoa - -"

Scott lunged towards him and Stiles scrambled backwards, feet tangling in a root hidden under the snow and toppling ass backwards. He gripped the little knife in a shaking hand like it would be a deterrent to Scott when he was on the equivalent of some sort of werewolf speed.

But Scott skidded to a stop a foot from him, crouching, one hand on the ground, claws making gouges in the snow, head down, shoulders shaking, gnashing his teeth hard enough that Stiles could actually hear it.

"Scott - - buddy - - you need to just breathe - - " Stiles demonstrated by taking a deep, shaky breath of his own. "Concentrate on the good stuff - - think about - I dunno, Allison - -?"

Scott let out a miserable sound, and Stiles backpedaled from that idea, figuring maybe Allison wasn't such a good starting point at the moment for Scott to find his inner peace.

"Or your mom? Or how awesome this trip woulda been if we hadn't gotten hijacked into crazy town? Oh fuck Scott - - think about something other than ripping me to shreds, okay?"

Scott threw his head back, eyes red as blood, and Stiles thought - - _oh fuck_ - - a moment before Scott surged forward, clawed hand ripping the pocketknife out of his numb fingers.

And plunged the blade into his thigh. And again, and again, like he was trying to tenderize meat. Knelt there, his blood spattering the snow, mutilating himself while Stiles stared in horror.

He let out low, tormented growl and bent over his knees, trembling.

"Scott- -?" Stiles eased up, moving slow, reaching out a hesitant hand and touching Scott's shoulder. Amazingly enough, his skin was hot to the touch. Like he was burning up on the inside. Or like his already enhanced metabolism had gone into overdrive. Scott flinched from the touch, breathing going rough and fast. Stiles clenched his jaw and gingerly took the blood-covered knife from his hand.

"You're okay. You're okay. You are okay, right?"

Finally, Scott looked up, skin as pale as you might expect from someone who'd just finished stabbing themselves repeatedly, but the wolf had faded down to fangs and claws and his eyes were sane. Pain filled, with just a glint of red still, but sane.

Scott nodded, and grimaced, flinching down as if in pain. Which well - - duh - - the leg of his jeans was soaked with blood from no less than a dozen or so stabs. But then, those wounds had probably already started healing.

"The wolfsbane?" Stiles took an educated guess.

"Yeah."

"Hurts?"

Scott let out a miserable laugh. "Its like my bloods on fire. I can barely - - think."

Stiles stared, aghast.

"It's getting better."

"You still having the urge to kill me?" Stiles ventured, because it would be nice to know.

Scott looked up at him wretchedly. "A little - - sorry."

Stiles let out a gust of breath. "Well that's just great."

Scott sat up suddenly, staring back the way he'd come.

"What?"

"They're coming." Scott hissed, and hauled him up faster than Stiles' cold numbed legs wanted to go.

They ran along the bank of the stream for a few dozen yards, before Scott growled low in his throat and shoved Stiles bodily into a snow-covered mass of bramble. He sprawled there, tangled in vines, covered in clumps of snow and did what any self-respecting prey would and froze.

Scott had disappeared, but he could hear the footfalls of men clomping through the snow at a fast clip. Two guys, barely discernable shapes in a darkness that was beginning to fade into the grey of very early morning. They both had guns. Big guns.

Stiles held his breath, willing himself to blend in with the background. And they paused, dead opposite of where he lay, staring at the ground, staring at the snow that he and Scott had disturbed in their passage.

One of them started to turn, scanning the ground and suddenly Scott was on them. Coming out of whatever shadow he'd found, faster than Stiles could follow, catching the barrel of one hastily raised rifle and slamming it with enough force to shatter bone, back into the face of the man who wielded it.

He was on the other one before the first one started to crumple. A shot was fired, and if it hit Scott he didn't flinch, just ripped into the guy with a roundhouse swipe of his claws, shredding jacket, shredding flesh beneath. The guy screamed and went down and Scott went down with him, snarling, full on wolf again, blood on his claws, blood in the air.

"Scott, stop!" Stile screamed at him. He scrambled up, fighting his way out of the bramble, doing the absolute stupidest thing he could have possibly done and going for a crazed werewolf, trying to drag him of the guy who was leaking blood into the snow under him. And honestly he could have given less of a fuck about the gun-toting bastard on the ground - - but Scott would have to live with himself once he had his head back on straight and committing straight up murder would tear him up.

Scott spun on him, half crouched over the man on the ground, half tensed to lunge at the friend who was trying pull him off him.

Stiles held up his hands and jerked his head towards the stream bank they'd been following. "C'mon. We've gotta _**go**_. Now, Scott!"

Scott took a breath, stared down at his blood covered hands, then back up at Stiles. He nodded, rising.

"Wait a sec." Stiles crouched by the first guy Scott had taken down and started working at the fastenings of his jacket. He pulled it off his unconscious form and tossed it at Scott. If the other one hadn't had his shredded by werewolf claws, he'd have scavenged that too. He was cold as shit, but at least he had on a couple of layers of shirts. He did take the gloves though, and shoved them on his own half numb hands. It was better than nothing.

He hesitated, then grabbed the rifle off the ground. The thing looked military grade, complete with an extended clip.

Scott looked at him like he was picking up a live snake or something. Or like he thought Stiles might accidentally shoot out an eye. Just no faith. Absolutely no faith at all.

"I can shoot a gun," he claimed defensively. Then added in an undertone. "No guarantee I hit what I'm aiming at - - but how hard can it be?"

Scott started moving without comment, and Stiles shouldered the rifle and stomped after.

"We need to get back to the lodge. To the garage, because I don't know about you, but there's only so long I'm gonna be able to keep ahead of these guys on foot."

"Okay," Scott sounded numb. He was back to only half wolf again, but he kept twitching every now and then, and his eyes kept flickering between deep brown and blood red and it was freaking Stiles out a little.

"So you have any idea which direction that might be?"

Scott stopped, so Stiles stopped with him and waited while he got his bearings, scenting the air or whatever, trying to get a directional clue.

Finally he jerked his head to the left and they started off that way. They stopped every once and while, when Scott sensed something, and just laid low and waited until whatever it was passed beyond his hearing or his scent, before moving again.

Stiles hadn't realized how far he'd run in the wrong direction, until he had to walk the distance back. It took them thirty minutes to reach the edge of the woods around the lodge grounds. By then the sky was rose hewed and pale over the treetops, the shadows no longer so deep, the darkness watered down to the point that it no longer offered protection.

They stayed within the shelter of the woods, following the edge of it until they saw the garage. It sat there, dark and innocuous and hopefully abandoned, if Dupont had all his guys out combing the woods for them.

Easy enough to circle behind and cross the distance between forest and building undetected. Then it was only a matter of circling around and finding a door.

It should have been a piece of cake. Would have been if they could have just gotten into the garage unseen. Whether it was just bad luck - - the latest in a string of monumental ill fortune - - or if Dupont was just that good at his tracking - - their forward momentum was stalled when a bullet tore into the corrugated tin of the garage front. Stiles yelped, staring wide eyed into the sudden flare of headlights heading towards them from the direction of the lodge.

_Gogogogo_, Scott was screaming in his ear, latching hold of his arm and hauling him back towards the edge of the building, even as more gunshots riddled the side of the garage around them. And Stiles got past the immobilizing shock of actually being shot at and ran, the two of them planting their backs against the shielding wall when they reached the back of the building and debating the wisdom of making the hundred yard dash across barren field to reach the shelter of the forest.

"You first." Scott shoved him, apparently deciding. "I've got your back."

"What? How?" Stiles started to argue that point until Scott shoved him into motion and then it was run or stand there like a target. It occurred to him while he was pelting across that open space, that the only way Scott had to have his back was to get between him and any bullets aimed for it. And that was just a shitty method of covering him and he didn't like it one bit.

Miraculously enough they made it to the edge of the woods, Scott practically treading on his heels, without Scott having to take a bullet in the back for him.

Almost they kept running, but Dupont's voice, amplified over speakers, stalled them.

"There's only so long you can run, boys."

They exchanged looks, catching their breaths, backs against flanking pines at the edge of the wood. Stiles snuck a glance around his, and saw the lights of a truck, maybe five hundred yards out, just sitting there idling. There were a few men out there beside it, and a guy he figured was Dupont standing in the driver's side door.

"I'm impressed, Scott," the loudspeaker blared. "You should be beyond reason, frothing at the mouth, more of a danger to your friend than we are. And yet, you've managed to resist the effects of the wolfsbane. Not only impressive, but curious."

Stiles made a motion towards the depths of the wood and mouthed, _go now?_ But Scott canted his head, a furrow between his brows, like he was onto something that Stiles couldn't discern.

"Since you've made my game more interesting than I expected," Dupont was going on. "Let me add a new dimension to yours. A new player to the game."

"Oh - - god," Scott breathed, an appalled look crossing his face.

"What? " Stiles hissed, and twisted to look around the tree again.

They were doing something at the back of the truck, guys climbing over a huge box fastened onto the flatbed.

"Run." Scott started moving, pulling him by the sleeve to get him moving along with him.

"What the hell?" Stiles complained, stumbling along in Scott's wake, looking over his shoulder in consternation.

"The vanago. He's setting the vanago loose on us."


	9. Chapter 9

They ran, pelting into the woods at breakneck speed. Scott holding back, snatching at Stiles' sleeve when he stumbled on a root or a hidden obstruction in the snow. Stiles complaining under his breath, wasting precious air when he ought to be using it all to just run, because the vanago was closing the distance between them.

Scott could hear its bulk breaking through the bramble at the edge of the wood, could hear the rumbling beat of its heart. The uneven snarls of an animal driven half mad maybe from its captivity at Dupont's hands. Or maybe it was simply mad to begin with, if that fable Dupont had spun them was true. And who was he to question the veracity of fables?

The wolf in him heard the predator behind them and snarled at the challenge. Half of him wanted to just let Stiles fend for himself and turn back and meet it. To rend flesh and shed blood and prove that he was no meek prey to be hunted down. But that was the wolfsbane that still pulsed through his veins like fire, talking. The other part, the rational part that was clutching after the frayed ends of control, remembered very well how badly outmatched he'd been with the first one and was rightly scared.

As scared as Stiles, who stank of it, who was still babbling between breaths - - coming up with fantasy ways they might get out of this predicament. Wasting his precious breath when the thing was almost upon them, because Stiles was only human and couldn't outrun it.

It burst out of the trees behind them, this hurtling mass of black fur and long wicked claws and Scott changed direction on a dime. Did the only thing he could do to gain Stiles a little distance, which was to go on the offensive.

And maybe he caught it off guard, its prey turning and brandishing claws of its own, the last thing it expected. He scored a ragged strike across its broad head and it lurched off its course, skidding in the snow, at least four hundred pounds of it scrambling for purchase as he launched himself over its shoulder, every instinct he had screaming that the only way to take out a larger, meaner opponent was to cripple it. He came down behind it, tearing at the back of its legs, trying to hamstring it. But the fur was thick and his claws barely made a dent.

"Scott," Stiles screamed at him, still there. Still goddamned there when Scott had tried to give him the chance to gain a little distance. Almost he wanted to rush over and disembowel him himself for the sheer stupidity of it.

Then all he wanted to do was dive for cover when the spray of bullets erupted, four or five in quick succession as Stiles aimed the gun and fired. The bullets started about eye level, before Scott hit the ground and ended up shredding the foliage overhead as the kickback drove the muzzle upwards. If Stiles had actually scored a hit on the vanago, the beast hadn't faltered. Just started, as Scott had at the deafening retort of gunfire.

Scott lifted his head and cast a split second glance at Stiles, who was ass backwards in the snow, fumbling to reestablish his grip on the rifle. Then the vanago pounced on him, raking claws across his chest, shredding his stolen jacket, huge jaws snapping at his throat. He roared back, shoving with arms and legs to get it off him, to keep it from chewing his head off.

_Bam. Bam. Bam._ The crack of more gunfire rattled off, painfully loud, and this time he heard the impact of bullets meeting flesh, and the thing on top of him reacted, springing backwards, giving him that chance he needed to scramble out from under. He hurt. The claws had scored flesh and bone and he wasn't healing as fast as he might have. He didn't know if it was the wolfsbane, or if the damage he'd already taken tonight was beginning to take its toll. There was a point, when the injuries started piling up, when even werewolf metabolism began fail.

"Go!" He screamed at Stiles, not bothering to see if he did, just driving at the vanago, slashing wildly with his claws, aiming for its vulnerable eyes. Part of him reveling in the bloodlust - - part of him dwindling and another part surging up in glee at the sheer savage thrill of backing this monster down.

It lurched back, snarling and whipping its head, until maybe it just got fed up, or maybe he'd pissed it off so much that pain and survival instinct got eaten up by sheer rage and it stopped retreating. He barely managed to avoid its jaws, but the claws caught his thigh as he was skipping backwards, and he rolled, leaving a trail of blood as he did. He came to his knees, one hand on the tear in his leg, the other on a long, thick branch half buried in the snow. He tightened his grip, picked it up and hurled it like a javelin. Amazingly enough the jagged end pierced the thick hide above the shoulder and the vanago staggered back, screaming in rage/pain.

Scott bounded to his feet and ran, hurtling through the trees, his own blood hot and wet against his skin, his heartbeat thudding in his ears. Stiles' scent as easy to follow as if he'd been leaving a trail of brightly colored M&M's for Scott's convenience. Easy prey. Full out, it took him maybe two or three minutes to catch up - - Stiles, loping through the snow, one hand on his side, breath harsh and ragged - - almost done. Weak.

He could take him down in an instant - - dig his claws into soft skin and helpless flesh - - sink his teeth into his vulnerable white throat and tear out his jugular - -

_God. Oh, God._ He'd almost tensed to make the leap when something akin to sanity trickled back. He staggered to a halt, twenty feet behind Stiles, leaning against a tree, digging his claws into rough bark, trying to find himself in the midst of the beast the pain and the fight had brought out in him.

"Scott? Dude, you okay?" Stiles' voice. Stiles' presence, coming at him out of the haze edging his human awareness. Stumbling towards him, none the wiser. Scott pressed his forehead to the bark, hating himself for what the beast in him had wanted to do.

"No," he admitted, thready whisper.

"It still back there?"

"Yes."

Stiles grasped his arm, hissing at the bloody gashes in the coat, then tightened his grip, pulling Scott off the tree.

"What are we gonna do? We need a plan. A better plan than just running."

Scott shook his head, at a loss. Nothing left in him beyond maintaining control.

"You come up with one and I'm in."

"Yeah, right. We don't have a lot of options here. Not a lot to work with," Stiles scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. "Something with wheels is still top of the wish list. Well, right after not getting eaten. Did I hear something? Do you hear anything?"

He could hear his heartbeat. It was throbbing in his head like a drum beat. His leg was still bleeding. His chest was. The blood had soaked the leg of his jeans right down to his sock. He looked at Stiles, who was staring off to their right.

"There is something - -" Stiles started.

Scott shook his head, trying to clear the inward path his senses were trying to take, and it came upon him in a rush. The scent of the vanago, which it couldn't mask, even if it had decided to practice a little stealth.

It charged out of the thicket at them, and Scott shoved Stiles hard enough to send him tumbling. It hit him, four hundred pounds of muscle and sinew and it was like getting blindsided by a wrecking ball. The impact hurled him backwards into the trunk of a young pine. Wood splintered. Bone did, and he stifled a scream.

He dropped down to knees and elbows, clutching his ribs, gasping after breath, the pain forcing the wolf in to retreat, everything shifting, flesh, vision, consciousness for one brief moment, until adrenalin or survival instinct let him shake off the blackness and move.

Stiles was screaming at him or at the beast, Scott couldn't comprehend the words through the pounding in his head enough to tell. He scrambled to his feet, holding his side, circling backwards while the thing stalked him. A shifting mass of fur and claws. Glistening black gums pulled back to reveal long, yellowed teeth. The cuts he'd made on its face already healed. Amber eyes tracked him as he retreated, gauging almost, now that it was him and it playing out a game of predator and bigger, badder predator.

Canny eyes.

It was old, Dupont had said. Scott wasn't up on his Russian history. He had no idea when the Bolshevic revolution had taken place, but he figured it was a long time ago. If it had been human once, maybe decades and decades of being the beast had drowned any higher intellect. But maybe not. Maybe there was still something in there smarter than your average bear. It had survived this long, after all.

His eyes fixed on the collar, barely visible through thick, black fur. This wide, tight metal band locked into place, like Dupont was keeping this thing as a pet.

"Get out of the way," Stiles was yelling, the gun in both hands and God knew Scott didn't want to be anywhere near the business end of that thing what with Stiles unreliable aim. He dove to the side, ribs screaming bloody murder even as Stiles let out a short burst of gunfire.

He must have been prepared for the kick this time, because he didn't spray the forest indiscriminately. Half the shots hit the vanago, thudding into the big body with dull, solid thumps.

It pissed it off. With a roar, it turned from following Scott to lunge towards Stiles. Scott was on it, before it could close the distance and rip Stiles apart, gun or no gun. He got an arm around its thick neck, digging his claws into the throat above the metal band with one hand, tearing at the face with the other, clinging like a burr when it reared up onto its back legs, trying to fling him off. It could almost reach him with its front legs/arms, claws raking the back of his legs.

"Shoot it," he screamed at Stiles. There was no better position, with its underbelly exposed and it distracted by a werewolf on its back.

And Stiles complied, spraying the thing with bullets. The retort of the gunfire was deafening, the enraged roars of the vanago were. It thrashed under him, impacted by bullets. Pain tore through Scott's side, the thudding impact of lead as one of those bullets took him. And again, a stinging thud against his calf. He ground his teeth and locked his arms, putting everything he had into choking the beast into submission since the bullets seemed to be pissing it off more than really damaging it.

Until one lucky shot took it in the eye and tore out the back of its skull, dappling Scotts face with its blood. It rocked backwards, the strength going out of it, its back legs crumbing as it toppled, taking Scott with it.

He threw himself clear, hitting the ground badly, all his lupine grace eaten away by exhaustion and pain. He felt bone that hadn't even started to knit grate. Actually heard the sound of it. A uniquely excruciating sort of agony that hit on multiple levels.

"Holy shit, Scott, that was amazing."

He must have blacked out. Was sure he'd blacked out because Stiles wasn't that quick and he'd been across the clearing last Scott had seen him, back against a tree, futilely pulling the trigger on a gun that had spent its load. He was crouched next to Scott now, staring down with fever bright eyes and red spotted cheeks.

"Oh my God, I killed it. I did kill it right? Shot it right in the eye."

"You shot _me_," Scott pushed himself up and gasped, stalling half way. Breathing came hard, and he thought a little desperately that the last impact with the ground might have shoved one of those broken ribs into a lung. There was a certain, bubbly sound to his breath. The coppery taste of blood in his mouth, in his nostrils.

"Oh, dude - - I'm sorry. I wasn't aiming for you."

"You weren't aiming - - period." Scott gasped, accepting Stiles hand in getting to his feet. And regretting it as soon as vertical orientation hit. Everything swayed, vision going wonky, giving him two worried looking Stiles instead of one. Support came in the form of Stiles' arm around his waist and his shoulder under Scott's shoulder, taking a good portion of his weight.

"We need to move," Stiles was saying. He had the gun over his other shoulder, hanging by its canvas strap. "Blood thirsty monsters never stay as dead when they're supposed to after a good bullet to the head. So a little distance is a good thing."

Which was a fair point.

"You're out of bullets - -" he felt the need to comment. His head was still swimming. Everything around him ebbing and cresting with this weird throbbing rhythm.

"I know."

They kept moving, no particular direction in mind, just distancing themselves from the vanago - - just moving to keep ahead of the hunters that would be out there somewhere, on their trail. Especially once Dupont realized his hunter beast was down for the count. God. Scott hoped it was down.

Light was seeping into the woods, soft and grey with early morning. Brighter because of the snow. If they didn't go to ground, they'd be easy to spot. They needed a place, any place, to hide until darkness - - to give him the chance to heal. The shape he was in now, he'd be next to useless in a real fight.

"What's that?" Stiles voice at his side startled him. He'd been staggering along in that much of a daze, that he'd almost forgotten him.

"What?" But the moment he asked it, he heard it too. The low whine of an idling engine. They exchanged glances, edging through the forest, keeping to the thickest parts, until they reached a dirt track. There was a big SUV, shiny black paint spattered with mud and snow sitting in the pitted road. A man stood by the front fender, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a walkie talkie in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He looked as if he were waiting, keeping guard maybe, while his comrades skulked in the woods, trying to track them down.

_Shit_. Stiles formed the word silently, crouching in the brush next to Scott. Then his brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing with that look he got when schemes were brewing in his head.

"You distract him."

Scott blinked at him, a pace behind and feeling like there were important plots points that were escaping him.

"What?"

Stiles jabbed a hand towards the woods at the front of the Hummer. "You distract him and I'll circle around back and take him out."

"You?"

Stiles gave him a look of exaggerated offense and hissed. "Yes, me. What you think I can't take a guy down?"

Scott kept staring, not entirely sure he did.

"Okay. Look at it this way. If he gets spooked and decides to shoot first and ask questions later - - who's gonna just be dead and who's gonna miraculously heal from the bullet wounds?"

Scott shut his eyes and rubbed at the through and through bullet hole in his side that was taking its own sweet time closing up. It still hurt like a bitch. Everything hurt like a bitch.

"I'm sorta over the whole novelty of getting repeatedly shot, thanks. You try it."

Stiles bugged his eyes, glaring at him. Scott dropped his head and took a breath, then shoved to his feet, moving as low and as quietly as he could through the woods.

He crept about forty yards up, crouched there for a moment, listening to the sound of Stiles trying to stealth foot it around the back way, then stood, and stepped out onto the muddy track.

It took the guy a moment to realize he was there. Scott saw it the moment the body tensed, eyes widening and fingers dropping the cigarette in favor of swinging the rifle around and training it on him.

"Don't shoot." He held up his hands, exhausted and in pain and hoping that showed on his face instead of the wolf that would set these guys off. God knew what was showing in his eyes, between the wolfsbane and the fevered way his body was trying to rid itself of one too many hurts.

The guy wavered, maybe under orders from his boss just to track and not to take a kill shot, because Dupont seemed like the kind of asshole to Scott that would want that honor for himself.

He saw Stiles edge out from around the back of the big vehicle, gun in his hands, but held backwards, butt end forward. The guy's eyes darted, as if he sensed the movement behind and Scott stepped forward, drawing his attention firmly back where it belonged.

A finger tensed on the trigger and he almost expected a burst of gunfire and the sharp crack of accompanying pain - - But Stiles slammed the butt of his rifle against the back of the man's head and he went down, a sprawl of limp limbs in the icy mud.

Stiles looked shocked for a second that he'd actually done it, then elated as it sank in that _'he'd actually done it'_, and he grinned triumphantly at Scott, delivering a thumbs up, before he scrambled to the drivers door of the Hummer and jerked it open.

Scott limped down the track, while Stiles stood on the jamb of the door, impatiently urging him on with a rolling wave of his hand.

"C'mon. C'mon. Let's go."

The air inside the SUV was warm. The sort of blissful warmth that made a body sort of sink into the leather seat, shut its eyes and just go a little limp in appreciation.

Stiles jammed a foot on the gas and the Hummer lurched forward, spinning mud under its tires before it gained traction and surged down the tract. A whole hell of a lot more power under the hood than Stiles was probably used to with his Jeep. Suspension so sweet, that they hardly felt the ruts in the road they bounced over.

Which wasn't to say that they'd be any less screwed if Stiles drove them off the narrow track and into a tree.

"Dude, slow down." Scott braced a hand on the dash as Stiles took a turn in the track way too fast for comfort. "Do you even know where you're going?"

"I'm following the road. It has to lead somewhere."

"Back to the lodge, maybe?"

Stiles cut him an uncomfortable look and shrugged. "Maybe. But maybe not. Wait - - is that a turn off up there?"

It was. The track cut across a wider, gravel road. Stiles jammed on the brakes and took the turn, heading right. He came close to a head on collision with an open topped Jeep heading up it. The Jeep swerved, skidding off the road and into the brush on the side of it.

Stiles was uttering creative curses. Scott clutched his side and ground his teeth, bracing his feet on the floorboard, trying not to get thrown into the door again.

"Crap. Just son of a fucking - - balls - - they'll be onto us now," Stiles was finishing up his tirade.

The speedometer was reading sixty on a road that probably shouldn't have seen speeds above twenty-five. The rearview mirror showed Scott a lot of dust in their wake, but no sign of a pursuing vehicle.

"Here," Stiles had dug in his back pocket and come up with his cell. He tossed it at Scott. "See if I've got a signal again."

He turned it on, not holding out much hope. But amazingly enough, he got two bars. He cast Stiles a wide-eyed look.

"GPS us a route to I-5."


	10. Chapter 10

10

It was a damned bumpy road and still this thing drove like something out of a wet dream. Stiles was in love. The part of his mind that wasn't feverishly churning over the half dozen other problems they were currently facing, was trying to come up with an excuse his dad might buy, that would allow him to make an even swap. His Jeep for this shiny new Hummer. It seemed fair, since they'd tried to kill him, right? He might be willing to even forgive and forget - - provided they didn't keep coming after them - - for a chance to show up at school after winter break driving this monster into the parking lot. Because girls loved expensive, shiny things. Some girls more than others.

He hit a rut that even the Hummer's suspension couldn't cushion and one of his other problems made an involuntary sound of pain and curled in upon himself in the passenger seat.

"Damn, are you not healing yet? Why aren't you healing yet?"

Scott drew in a breath between clenched teeth. "I am - - it's just - - going really slow. _Really_ slow."

"Does it have to do with the wolfsbane? That's gotta be messing with your system a lot - - y'know having it injected right into your veins? I think it's the wolfsbane."

"God - -" Scott growled, bracing himself on the dash when the right front tire hit a rut the size of Missouri. His eyes flashed red and claws that hadn't been there before dug gouges in the fine leather of the dash.

It was criminal, but at the moment, with Scott curling his fists, eyes squeezed shut, concentrating maybe on not going ballistic in the closed space of the automobile, Stiles decided not to call him on it.

"Scott - -?"

"I don't know!" Scott finally ground out. "Maybe. Maybe I just got shot one too many times."

That was a dig at him, Stiles just knew it. And okay, maybe his aim sucked - - and maybe the bullet that had gone through the vanago's eye had been sheer luck - - but he was pretty sure it was that bullet that had taken the thing down. And once Scott wasn't cringing in pain and hovering on the verge of a werewolf tantrum, Stiles had every intention of expounding on his Rambo moment in excruciating detail.

"Stiles - -" Scott was staring ahead, eyes narrowed.

Stiles leaned forward himself, peering over the wheel. He saw the gate in the distance, the one they'd passed when they'd entered Dupont's 'preserve'. On the one hand it was encouraging that they were on the right track. On the other, it was closed and there were a couple of vehicles half blocking the road in front of it, and guys with guns scampering around.

"Well fuck."

"What are we - -?" Scott started, while Stiles was cursing through clenched teeth. If they stopped they were dead. One way or another they were dead. So common sense said keep going. Well, maybe not _common_ sense - - because common sense was screeching for him not to barrel full speed into a set of parked vehicles - - so maybe it was some other less popular sense that made him press his mouth tight and tighten his hands around the wheel.

"Put on your seatbelt," he said, fumbling for his own.

Scott stared at him, a distinct look of panic in his eyes, before he snatched for his own seat belt.

And Stiles floored it.

Men scattered when they realized they weren't stopping. A bullet cracked into the windshield, another into the grill, and then he hit the space between the two blocking cars, slamming into the front end of an open topped jeep, spinning it half on its side. The impact jarred the hell out of them, but didn't slow them down, and the Hummer slammed through the gates, spitting up wood and metal in its wake.

There was the _ding ding_ sound of bullets hitting the back of the vehicle and they both scrunched down in their seats,

"Oh my God - - oh my God - - I _am_ Rambo - -" he laughed hysterically. Everything was shaking. He had to lock his arms to keep his hands firm on the steering wheel.

"I think I hate you - -" Scott gasped.

"You worship the ground I walk on," Stiles countered, casting him a manic grin. Which faded when he looked in the rear view mirror and saw the dust of a pursuing vehicle behind them. Which okay, after kidnapping and assault and trying to hunt them down and kill them, it stood to reason these guys weren't just going to throw in the towel and head back to the lodge for a cold beer and an evening trading hunting stories in front of the fire.

At least not while they still had the chance of taking them out in the privacy of the great Northern California wilderness. If they could reach some semblance of civilization they might back off. A little hard to gun them down in the middle of some town and claim justification with a casual 'that one's a werewolf and that one just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so no harm no foul, 'kay?'

Which didn't mean they didn't need help. The idea of calling his dad made him sweat. One, his dad was already half convinced that he couldn't take a walk down his own street anymore without stumbling into some life or death situation - - which, granted wasn't that far from the truth, considering Beacon Hills' history. And two, the reserves his dad had to call on were law enforcement and explaining the whole big game hunter on the trail of an innocent werewolf thing to a bunch of cops might not go over so well for his dad or the werewolf in question.

Which left the other, more reasonable option of giving the Argent's a yell. Jan Dupont had said they were familiar with the Argent family - -so maybe the Argents might be familiar with them. And if you were trying to back off a group of militant assholes with heavy artillery, it made sense to bring in your own artillery toting, militant bad asses to even the odds.

"I'm calling Allison," he said.

Scott didn't comment, looking too miserable to care.

He snatched up the cell phone Scott had dropped into one of the cup holder wells and hit Allison's number.

It rang enough times that he feared it might go to voice mail, before she picked up with a groggy, sleep hazed 'Hello?'

"Hey, Allison, what's up?" He said, casting a worried glace in the side view and confirming that their pursuit was still firmly in place.

"Stiles? Do you know what time it is?"

He glanced at the time on the cell then brought it back to his ear. "Why yes. Yes, I do. Listen, is your dad around?"

"Its four o'clock in the morning, Stiles. What do you want?"

"Well, funny story, that. Me and Scott are sorta in a little bit of a jam and could use a some help."

There was a pause from her end, a rustle of what might have been covers shifting, then the soft sound of her walking, before she asked curtly. "What sort of jam? I thought you were headed to some show up North."

"Yeah, well, that didn't work out so well - - and I'm not getting my money back on those tickets. And then there was the whole getting attacked by supernatural monsters and big game hunters trying to muderize us. That sort of jam. So you ever heard of a guy named Julian Dupont?"

"I know him," Chris Argent's grim voice answered, so Stiles figured Allison had gone straight to her dad and woken him up. "Where are you?"

"Trying to get back on I-5 somewhere north of bumfuck nowhere in the middle of the forest. The last town big enough to remember passing was maybe - - Redding?"

"At the Dupont preserve." Argent assessed and it just figured he'd be in the know. "How the hell did the two of you end up there?"

"Uh. There was like a thing - - a bear thing - - that attacked us and tore up my jeep - - and it seemed like a good idea at the time - - and then Scott couldn't let go of a scent and things went to hell - -"

"Are you guys okay?" That was Allison, which meant they were on speakerphone.

"Scott got tore up pretty bad. And we're running for our lives with guys after us that have a lot of guns - - so no, not really."

"But he's all right?" Allison pressed about the same time her father cut in with: "Dupont knows Scott's a werewolf?"

Stiles snorted. "He's been better. And yeah, Dupont knows."

"And he initiated a hunt?"

"Yeah."

"Then you're in trouble. Dupont is a relentless bastard who doesn't give up a hunt, once he's started. Present him with a challenge and he won't let it go."

"Well that's freakin' fantastic. What do we do?"

"Don't stop. For anything. Get back on I-5 and head south. Half way point between you and here is - -" Argent paused, likely pulling up a map. "Greenton. We'll meet you there. Do you understand?"

"Yeah,"

And apparently that was all the small talk Argent had in him and then it was just Allison's worried voice, telling them to be careful, before the connection was severed. And the problem with that was, being careful when the universe had decided to align against you was always easier said than done.

"Okay. Don't stop. Head South. That's a plan," Stiles muttered. "But hey, on the bright side, Allison still cares enough to worry about you."

Scott got as far as cutting him a slightly affronted look when a SUV skidded out onto the road from barely perceptible trail cutting through the bordering woods and slammed into the Hummer.

Stiles screamed like a girl. Scott did, as metal screeched against metal and the impact drove them off the road and into the grass and bramble on the far side. The Hummer plowed over brush and saplings, with Stiles yanking desperately at the wheel, trying to get them pointed back at the road.

The SUV tried to cut off that route, but Stiles cut the wheel hard and the Hummer bullied its way back on the gravel track. The SUV roared back up beside them, half on the road, half on the overgrown strip beside it. There was a pop and the backseat window on Scott's side shattered.

"Oh - - fuck - " Scott's serious cursing was usually reserved for special occasions. Stiles supposed bullet spawned safety glass pelting him from behind qualified.

"Do something - -" Scott suggested, sliding down as far as he could in his seat, as another spray of bullets hit the side of the Hummer.

"Like what?" Stiles voice broke embarrassingly. He yanked the wheel, and the Hummer's big back end swung over, slamming into the front end of the SUV. It spun out, cutting a 180 swath in the snow-covered grass, ending up nose down in a gully, one back wheel off the ground and still spinning.

"That'll work," Scott said breathlessly, scooting up enough to peer over the door and into his side view mirror.

"Holy shit," Stiles gasped. Then. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

His gut was churning, nerves finally taking their toll in the form of nausea and a bit of after the fact light-headedness.

"God - - please don't," Scott cast him a desperate look.

Stiles waved a hand. The cold air coming in through the shattered back window was helping. The fact that he didn't see any vehicles in the rear view mirror let him take a beat and just breathe for a moment without his heart wanting to crawl up into his throat, and his stomach subsequently wanting to lurch up and fill the empty cavity.

He could breathe even better once he saw the turn off onto actual paved highway up ahead. He exchanged a look with Scott, who gave him a faint weary, nod.

Scott looked wasted. Stretched thin and exhausted and in more pain that he was letting on, of that Stiles was damned sure. There was too much old blood on his clothes to tell if he was still actively bleeding from any of his various slashes or gunshot wounds, but it was obvious that his healing had slowed down to a snail's pace.

He kept casting him worried looks, until Scott finally got tired of it, and said, without opening his eyes. "Dude, I'm okay - - really."

"You're full of shit. And your eyes are still flashing red."

"Yeah?" Scott opened them marginally and they were thankfully normal brown. But Stiles had caught a lot of flickers of red when they'd been hightailing it down the country road.

"They'll stop - - eventually. When the wolfsbane wears off."

"Yeah, and when will that be? You still having any urges to - - you know - - wolf out on me?"

"I hurt too much," Scott muttered. Then, he shrugged and admitted. "A little, but I've got it under control."

"So why aren't you healing?"

Scott shut his eyes again, pressing his head back into soft leather, refraining from speculation.

Stiles hated _not_ speculating. Hated not being in the know when it was important. And Scott in the grip of some sort of unknown wolfsbane poisoning was important. He snatched up the cell, and scrolled through his contacts until he found Dr. Deaton. Since he was already waking people up indecently early in the morning, he might as well keep up the streak.

He dialed the number and Deaton, unlike Allison, picked up on the second ring, answering with the tone of a man who had long banished any traces of sleep.

"Hey Dr. Deaton. Quick question."

"Good morning to you. I wasn't aware that teenagers willingly embraced the front end of 7 am. How can I help you?"

"Well, hypothetically, let's say a werewolf got injected with a straight shot of wolfsbane - - like on a scale of one to ten, how bad would that be?"

There was an overlong pause on the other end of the line, then Deaton responded cautiously. "With most strains of the plant, it would be fatal within thirty to a hundred and twenty minutes, depending on the individual in question."

Stiles shot Scott a look, which Scott returned with a weary shrug, very obviously not dead.

"Okay, so let's say we've passed that mark and we're not getting any of the usual symptoms?"

"There are a few rare strains of monkshood that while poisonous, aren't always fatal when ingested. Detrimental, yes, but survivable."

"Oh. Well, that's good then. How detrimental, exactly?"

"These stains are used to bring out the wolf and suppress the human. In very, very controlled dosages, the effects are - - short-lived. A larger, more direct dosage - - you did mention an injection? - - would be more troublesome."

"I'm thinking larger dose, maybe."

"Stiles, while I appreciate a good hypothetical conversation as well as the next man - - lets be a bit more specific. Are we talking about Scott?"

Stiles blew out a breath. "Yeah."

"How long ago was he dosed?"

Stiles shot Scott a questioning glance and got a blank look and a shrug, which meant Scott had probably lost a lot of time when he'd been wolfed out. Stiles looked at his watch and did a little mental calculation.

"Uh - - if I had to guess - - four or five hours." It didn't even sound real him saying it. It felt like it had been forever.

"He's with you now?"

"Yeah."

"And he's in control?"

"Yeah. Are you saying he shouldn't be? It sounds like you're saying he shouldn't be."

Deaton was quiet a few beats. Then, "With a direct dose of wolfsbane in his system - - it's a little surprising he isn't trying to tear out your throat."

"Oh. Really? Well - - that's just fantastic. Great news, doc. Just what I wanted to hear." He controlled the urge to slam the phone against his forehead in frustration. He took a deep breath and plunged on. "That's not the only problem. He took a lot of damage and he's not healing like usual."

"Not surprising. The wolfsbane is a poison after all. As long as it's in his system, it's compromising his natural ability to heal. Add that to the fact that he's committing all his energy on keeping his predatory instincts in check and we've got a problem."

"So how long before the wolfsbane is out of his system?"

"It varies. 18 to 24 hours depending on the individual."

Stiles pressed his mouth in annoyance. 18 to 24 hours was a damned long time, when they were on the road a really long way from home, with guys that wanted to kill them maybe still on their tail. "That's just great."

He exchanged a look with Scott, who groaned and flopped his head back against the headrest.

The GPS predicted a five-hour drive to that halfway point where Allison's dad wanted to meet up.

Traffic wasn't heavy this early in the morning this far north up the I-5. A lot of tractor trailers, a few cars. He kept checking the rear view looking for pursuit. There were a few cars back there in the distance that looked like they'd been there for a while, but then, he wasn't sure. It was a lot harder detecting a tail than it looked on TV.

He had the heat on high, trying to counteract the cold air rushing in through the shattered back window, but it was only able to do so much. Scott was huddled against his door, one foot up on the dash, arms wrapped around himself. Every once and a while he'd twitch a little, shivering and he'd clamp his jaw to tamp it down.

"Any better?" Stiles asked for maybe the third time in an hour.

Scott was silent a bit, either taking stock and considering an answer or tired of Stiles asking. Finally he relented. "I can breathe again without it tasting like blood."

"Hey, that's something," Stiles said reflexively while he was coming up with various terrible reasons why Scott had been tasting blood when he breathed. "Why don't you try and get some sleep? Trust me, I'll let you know if shit's about the hit the fan."

Scott shook his head. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"If I'm asleep, I can't control it."

Stiles crinkled his brow. "Because of the wolfsbane."

"Its like this itch - - this really nasty itch - - that I wanna scratch so bad I can taste it - - but if I do, its only gonna make it worse. And if I'm asleep - - nothing's stopping me from scratching." He gave Stiles a helpless look, struggling with that analogy.

"The 'worse' being wolfing out and going a little crazy in the closed confines of a SUV. Yeah, I can see where that might be problematic. Let's listen to some music. Play some road games. I Spy sounds fun, right? Or the alphabet name game. Lets do the ABC's of sci-fi characters."

So for the next several hours, Stiles did what Stiles did best. He talked. About everything and anything that crossed his mind. He had a pretty open floor, since Scott's contributions to the conversation tended to be monosyllable at best. And every once and a while he'd catch a glimpse of red between Scott's half lowered lashes, or an involuntary extension of claws that had the leather arm rest pretty much shredded, when Scott's grasp on control slipped. Which got Stiles thinking about how both Deaton and Dupont had been pretty surprised at Scott actually being able to maintain that restraint at all. And since Stiles was verbalizing his mental processes at the moment, he asked it out loud.

"Do you think its just an alpha thing, you being able to deal with the wolfsbane shooter Dupont gave you - - or is it a 'true' alpha thing?"

He didn't wait for Scott's input before plunging on. "Because they were both pretty surprised, right? At you not going off the deep end. I mean, I get the feeling that if it had been just any old werewolf, they'd have gone stark raving running around howling at the moon, trying to shred anything with a pulse, crazy. Hell, some of the wolves I've met can barely hold it together if you look at them the wrong way, anyway."

"I did," Scott admitted uncomfortably. "At first. I don't know how long before - - before I ran into you and I managed to pull it back."

"But you did pull back. I appreciate that, by the way. Which brings us back to how.

So, have you got some Zen wolf thing going on that gives you a little bit more control. Is it like the force - - werewolf style? Which I have to tell you boggles my mind a little, because you aren't really the poster child for restraint and discipline. Maybe for scattered and disorganized. So its gotta be some sort of alpha thing that allows you extra resistance. And maybe you've got a little something extra to pull on since you're not your everyday run of the mill apha."

Scott gave him a narrow look from under his lashes and muttered. "Can we talk about something else?"

"We _can_, but this is interesting. I mean have you grilled Deaton for details? Other than the red eyes - - and I have to tell you, the yellow looked better on you - - and the ability to break tried and true rules of the supernatural - - what other super powers did you get?"

"I don't have super powers."

"Yeah, you sorta do. From day one, but that's neither here nor there. We're talking new ones."

Scott shrugged. "Everything's a little better, I guess. I haven't gone out and tested it."

"Yeah, well why haven't you? We need to get on that ASAP. Because as far as I can tell, you're not winning any championship belts in the kicking ass department. That thing back there whipped your ass. And I can think of at least - -oh, three werewolves off hand - - friendly ones - - well, relatively friendly - - that could probably kick your ass."

"Stiles, can we please talk about something else - -" Scott ground out.

This time when Stiles glanced at him, the claws were out and digging into the armrest and the while the brown eyed glare Scott had tossed him earlier hadn't been disturbing in the least, the red tinged one was a bit more unsettling.

Stiles swallowed and changed the subject. "Did I tell you about my MacGyver moment when I broke out of the lodge? With a pocketknife? I didn't tell you that, yet, did I?"


	11. Chapter 11

11

They were running on fumes by the time they reached Greenton. The Hummer was literally sputtering, on the verge of choking out by the times Stiles pulled into the first gas station off the Greenton exit.

Scott had never been so happy to get out of a vehicle in his life. For the better part of the last hundred miles, he'd felt like crawling out of his skin. Every sound, every scent, every feel, down to the way the material of his clothing rubbed against his skin had begun to eat away at the core of his self control. It had taken everything in him not to throw open the door and fling himself from the Hummer in the vain hope that if he did loose control, it wouldn't be within reach of Stiles.

And maybe Stiles had realized, because he'd started casting a lot of worried looks Scott's way those last miles, his knuckles popping now and then when he'd grip the wheel too tight as his nerves got the best of him.

But it hadn't stopped him talking. Which in and of itself had been more of a blessing than an irritation. Honestly, Scott had sat there most of the time, only hearing the sound of Stiles voice, the words blurring into a meaningless buzz in the background. A good thing, since sometimes the _sound_ of Stiles' voice was a lot more calming that the actual words spewing from his mouth.

So he was out the door almost before the Hummer stopped, taking in great gulps of air, the world almost spinning in his relief to be free of confinement. If he had to drive another four or five straight hours anywhere in this condition, it was likely he _would_ snap.

"You okay?" Stiles looked up from trying to locate the gas tank release.

"Yeah. I'm going to the bathroom." He didn't wait for a response, just turned and headed towards the side of the station. There were a few cars in the lot. A few at the pumps. A camper with a trio of kids screaming bloody murder just inside the open door. The sound of their shrieks made the skin on the back of his arms stand up. He could smell the scent of cooking meat from the fast food restaurant next to the gas station. The smell of urine and smoke from the bathrooms he was approaching. The heady aroma of gasoline wove through the other scents. Stiles claimed to love the smell of it. It had always used to make Scott a little light headed before he'd been turned. Now it just made him a little sick if he got too much of it on his hands or his clothing when he was filling a tank.

He took a breath, attempting to block it all out. Once actually in the gas station men's room, the smells got worse. More appallingly concentrated. He didn't usually have much of a gag reflex, but everything was hitting him like a hammer to the head and he had to stop inside the door and breath through his mouth a few seconds just to keep from choking.

The man that belonged to the kids and the camper - - Scott could smell them on him - - was finishing up at the sink. He cast Scott a glance, then a second longer, wary one, taking in the bloodstains and the ripped clothing. Scott figured he looked either like the victim of an ax murderer or the ax murderer himself. Considering the wolfsbane wondering around his bloodstream, he was probably leaning towards the latter.

He didn't even try and explain it away. Just stared at the guy until he paled, ducked his head and hurried past Scott and out of the restroom.

He made use of the urinals first, leaning there with a hand on dirty tile, experiencing a relief that was almost sexual while he emptied his bladder. Like he'd already figured out, _everything_ was heightened.

When he'd finished, he went to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror, searching for the involuntary red that Stiles said he'd been flashing. But his eyes were just brown. Plain, ordinary brown.

He swallowed, and turned on the water, scrubbing the long dried bloodstains off his hands. It was caked under his nails. The cuffs of the stolen jacket were red with it. Even dried, the scent of it was overpowering. Maybe that had been part of the problem cooped up in the Hummer all those hours - - he hadn't been able to get the smell of blood out of his head. And he was covered in it. His own, the vanago's, the blood of the men he'd taken down.

He curled his hands around the cool porcelain of the sink, breathing deep, trying to curb the agitation. The bathroom door banged open and he started, an involuntary lengthening of nails, but it was only Stiles, bustling in with a gust of cold air, bright eyed and looking more energetic than he had any right to be. He gave Scott a faint nod of acknowledgement, before he made a beeline to the urinals.

"I called Allison and let her know we were here," he said over his shoulder. "They're not far out. We're gonna meet at the Denny's across the street. I don't know about you, but I'm starving."

Stiles was putting on a good front. It had to be a front, because the Hummer wasn't the only thing running on fumes. Scott was exhausted and he had werewolf metabolism to fall back on. Stiles had to be dead on his feet. Then again Stiles' ADHD was probably running on overdrive. In which case he'd be bouncing off walls up to the moment his body finally had enough and he crashed, hard and fast. Scott had witnessed the phenomenon too many times to count.

"How're you doing, wound wise?" Stiles finished up his business and joined Scott at the sinks.

It was a good question. The ribs hadn't fully knit. He could _feel_ them every deep breath he took. The rest of him ached, but it was this dull, overall misery, not any one concentrated spot.

He tried to unzip the coat to see, but the zipper stalled in its track, mangled in three places, care of vanago claws. And inexplicably, it set him off, the simple little frustration of being stymied by the zipper of a jacket that wasn't even his. Blood rushed in his ears, vision tunneled, going red around the edges and for a few frenzied moments, he lost track of himself. Lost track of everything but a blind rage that howled in indignation over so much more than a wardrobe malfunction.

He came back to himself with water soaking his jeans, spraying from the twisted plumbing jutting out from the wall where the sink had used to be. The sink itself was across the bathroom, ripped off the wall and lying on the floor by the urinals. Stiles was against that wall himself, skin pale as snow, eyes wide and frightened.

Scott stared down at his claws, then at his reflection in the mirror. The wolf stared back. With an effort that was almost painful, he pulled it back. It was harder now, than it had been - - the exhaustion draining his strength. He met Stiles' eyes.

He opened his mouth and no coherent explanation immediately came to mind. "I'm sorry - - I don't know what - - I didn't mean to do that."

Stiles took a deep breath, shaking the tension out of his shoulders with a jerky rotation of his head. "I know."

He glanced at the sink, then back to Scott and commented wryly. "On the bright side, we've only got another - - oh, 10 to 14 hours - -of you spontaneously bursting out into homicidal fits, so yay for us."

Scott didn't think that was nearly as amusing as Stiles seemed to. With a distinct lack of self-preservation, Stiles moved right up to him, clapping a hand on his shoulder, jerking his head towards the door and urging Scott that way. "Let's get out of here before somebody comes in and nails us for destruction of property."

They walked back across the parking lot to the Hummer. The driver's side was in pretty good shape, but the passenger side was banged, scraped and dented, a gaping hole where the back seat window ought to be. The windshield had a huge radiating spider web of cracks from a shot that thankfully hadn't penetrated the glass. Basically, the vehicle looked like somebody had been playing demolition derby with a hundred thousand dollar toy.

"Its gonna break me, putting gas in this thing," Stiles complained, then he stopped, hand frozen in the midst of reaching for the nozzle of the gas pump.

There was a black SUV sitting across the parking lot, and a Hummer that looked like a twin to theirs, sans damage, rolling to a stop next to it. Men climbing out, slow and cautious, camouflage coats and knit hats, and eyes that were hard and focused. The smell of gunpowder. The scent of expensive cigars that Scott had become all too familiar with.

"C'mon," Scott clutched at Stiles' arm, backing away slowly, wanting distance and the safety of witnesses. There was a gas station convenience store full of people behind them, and a McDonalds bustling with a breakfast crowd just next door. Safe places where men on a covert mission might hesitate to try and gun down prey in full daylight.

Dupont stepped out of the passenger side of the other Hummer, a handgun held close to his side.

"If you try and run, I'll put a bullet in your friend's back," Dupont said it softly enough that the men standing next to him might not have heard. Scott did. "And there are other people here - - innocent bystanders - - that might find their way into the path of a bullet as well."

Scott stopped his backward retreat, fingers curled in Stiles' sleeve, blood pounding behind his eyes. The urge to bound past Stiles - - to cover the space between them and Dupont and rip the man's throat out was almost overpowering. And maybe part of that was the wolfsbane talking - - but maybe a little of it was just him, pushed beyond his limits and tired to death of this bastard threatening Stiles to get at him.

But as long as he had an iota of self-control, he wouldn't take the chance that he'd trigger a spray of gunfire that would take Stiles and anyone else unlucky enough to be caught in the line of fire down.

"Shit," Stiles was hissing, pulling at Scott's hand on his arm, not understanding why they weren't running like rabbits away from the hunters facing them down. "What are you doing?"

Scott couldn't think, pulse rushing fast and furious, anger and frustration urging the wolf to surge forward, and he couldn't afford that to happen here in the midst of all these people.

"Stand down, Dupont." The order came from behind them, sharp and loud and he'd been so focused on what was in front of them, he hadn't noticed what was behind.

Stiles spun, gaping, as Chris Argent strode past them, no _visible _weapon and no hesitation planting himself in the middle of the parking lot, between them and Dupont's small army. Scott cast a quick look over his shoulder. Zeroed in on Allison, all in black, moving to the fore of her father's SUV, the crossbow in her hand almost invisible against the black of her pants, unless you were really looking to see it. Her eyes were calm and collected, meeting his for a pair of frantic heartbeats before her gaze shifted past him to her father and the men her father was facing down. Noticing Isaac was almost an afterthought, as he moved around the other side of the Argent's vehicle, a cell phone in hand, backing Allison up.

Then he turned his attention back to the confrontation in play, as Dupont stepped forward, a few paces past the ranks of his men.

"Argent. It's been a long time."

"Not long enough," Argent said. "And if you weren't attempting plain murder, it would have been longer still."

Dupont's mouth thinned in a humorless smile. "Now you're the last person I would have expected to stand between a hunter and a wolf - - all things considered. I hear condolences are in order."

"You're not that kind of '_hunter_'," Argent said flatly. "And you're targeting two _boys_ - - one of whom is wholly human - - who have no blood on their hands."

"I have a few men who might beg to differ on that point."

"Yeah? Men who were trying to kill us, you crazy mother fucker," Stiles piped up, obviously feeling a surge of courage with a pair of Argents as backup. Then, very softy in an aside to Scott, "Did you actually off anybody?"

"I don't know." And he honestly wasn't entirely sure on that count. He hoped not.

"This is not your business, Argent." Dupont said, all the fake geniality draining from his face. "Back off."

"Unfortunately, these two _are_ my business. And not just mine," Argent canted his head towards the gas station entrance, where a county sheriff's car was pulling into the lot. Not a Greenton county sheriff's car, but a one with a Beacon Hill's crest on the side.

"Crap," Stiles muttered, as if he thought his dad was going to come down on him for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes Scott didn't comprehend all the mysterious ways Stiles' mind worked.

Sheriff Stilinski stepped out of the squad car, hand on his holstered side arm. He didn't even look their way, just moved around the front end of his car and moved to join Argent with the measured stride of a law enforcement official who wasn't a good two hundred and fifty miles out of his own jurisdiction.

"Gentlemen, you'd better have permits for every single one of those weapons. And if those are semi-automatic firearms I'm seeing there, the California State Police will be especially interested when they get here."

Dupont lifted a brow, giving Argent a pointed look. "You've involved the law, Argent? Treading a thin line, aren't you?" But he slipped the gun into his coat pocket, holding up empty hands as he backed away.

"Far be it for me to tread on the territory of an Argent."

He cast a look past Argent and Sheriff Stilinski, at Scott. A pointed promise that made Scott curl his fists, nails biting into his palms. Then he and his men climbed back into their vehicles and retreated.

Stilinski and Argent didn't move until the two vehicles were a good ways down the road, then the sheriff spun on his heel and stalked towards Scott and Stiles.

"Are you hurt?"

Stiles got a hand on the side of his neck, his father peering critically into his eyes, trying to suss out the truth from his son's face, when he didn't always get it out of his mouth.

"Dad - - dad, I'm fine."

The sheriff kept looking for a moment, then blew out a tension filled breath. He cast a look at Scott.

"Scott? Are you okay?"

He nodded, curling and uncurling his fists.

Then Allison was there, the scent of her reaching him before she actually got up into his personal space, asking the same questions the sheriff had - - are you hurt? What happened? Is that blood?

Her hand was on his arm and he almost flinched from the touch, flinched from being surrounded by too many people of a sudden, even if half of them were pack. Stiles was talking a mile a minute, hands flying every which way as he related the story, which was good because Scott was grinding his jaw, trying to back down the desire to either bolt or snap at the bodies crowding him back up against the side of the Hummer.

He caught Isaac's stare, Isaac's faint, questioning cant of the head as Isaac picked up on Scott's wolf growling just under the surface of his human façade. Isaac wasn't always the first to catch on to the subtle things, but he was a wolf and he knew the danger signs when he caught scent of them. He caught Allison's arm, pulling her far enough away from Scott to give him an out. It could have been for her benefit, it could have been for Scott's - - either way, Scott was grateful. He slipped past her, to the rear of the Hummer and breathed deep.

He barely heard Stiles giving details. About the lodge, about the first attack, about the basement and the subsequent violence that had ensued there. Sheriff Stilinski grasped his son's arm and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to see the neatly bandaged wound on his arm. Stiles squirmed under the attention, brushing it off as nothing. He'd bitch and complain and moan about the littlest nothing to Scott, but he hated admitting weakness to his dad.

Argent stabbed a finger at the below twenty members of their little gathering. "I want you four on the road headed home, now."

"What? What are you gonna do? Dad?" Stiles was shifting from foot to foot, staring between Argent and his father."

"Dupont crossed a line when he started hunting innocents," Argent said. "I don't intend to let him get away with it."

"California has strict regulations regarding assault weaponry," the sheriff said. "I've contacted a few buddies of mine in the state police and we're going to pay a visit to this lodge of Mr. Dupont's and see how many state laws he's in violation of."

"No shit? Really?"

"Go," Argent said.

"My Jeep's there," Stiles yelled, as Argent and his father were heading towards the squad car. "But I was thinking maybe I'd trade it for this Hummer - - you know, since they didn't seem to want it anymore - -"

"No!" The sheriff barked without turning back.

"Leave it." Argent added, before giving Allison a nod and a - - "Every hour on the hour until you get home."

"I will," she promised and Scott had to assume they meant phone calls.

"I don't like it," Stiles was casting longing looks at the Hummer, as they moved towards Allison's SUV. "Them going back up there when that bastard has a small army and monsters in the basement."

"We killed the monster," Scott said.

"You sure?" Stiles cast him a critical look. "Because I've seen you guys look dead as doornails and hop back up to life?"

"They have guns," Isaac commented.

"Yeah," Stiles snapped, giving him an evil eye that maybe had more to do with Stiles holding grudges on Scott's behalf than anything else. "And I had a gun. A really big gun, _and_ a pissed off werewolf and the thing barely went down."

"That's why my dad is going," Allison cut him short, before he could get into a tirade. And there was only so much Stiles could find to argue with that point, since Chris Argent probably knew more about taking down monsters than all of them combined. A lot more.

"So we need to go," Allison said, but she was looking at him, a little concerned little furrow between her brows. "That's a lot of blood on your clothes, Scott. Are you sure, you're okay?"

He shrugged, stuffing hands his pockets to hide the white knuckled fists he was making, not sure he was capable of getting back inside a vehicle for another four hours and keeping hold of his sanity.

"I'm not driving all the way back home without something on my stomach," Stiles declared. "I'm so hungry I'm lightheaded. I think its low blood sugar and I need a fast food fix."

"I could eat a burger," Isaac shrugged, not concerned in the least, apparently, with sticking to any particular plan. Allison cast him a frown, then tossed one at Stiles, before she took a breath and buckled to the inevitable.

So they ended up walking across the grassy medium between the gas station and the neighboring McDonalds. Allison fell back to walk beside Scott and the scent of her hit him like a round house left out of nowhere. Subtle and female and _her_ and he wished she'd go and walk beside Isaac, because the smell of her was making his thoughts scatter and he needed his thoughts focused and cohesive.

"I don't think you're okay," she said softly.

He swallowed, trying to focus on the scent of red meat and grease oozing from the restaurant they were approaching.

"I've been better," he admitted.

"Deaton caught us before we left. He sent this for you." Her hand came out of her pocket holding a pill bottle. There was no label, just a plain green bottle, like the ones Deaton used in his office.

He stared at it, then up at her.

"He said it was up to you, but he thought you'd need it."

He took it from her hand, his fingers brushing hers. The trill that went up his arm was electric, primal, mixing in his head with the heady scent of her. There was the faintest scent of Isaac on her - - more on her coat than her skin - - but it made his claws creep out. Made his vision turned a little red around the edges.

And oh, God, but he needed to get a grip if he was going to be stuck in a car with them for the rest of the morning. And the grip was in his hand, courtesy of Deaton.

He closed his fingers around it, shoved it in his pocket, hiding half extended claws from her.

Stiles and Isaac were already in line when they walked into the restaurant. Scott hung back, not needing to be stuck in a fast food checkout line in the midst of a dozen irritable morning commuters. He headed for a booth. He groaned when Allison followed him instead of joining Stiles and Isaac in line. She hesitated, as if she were considering sliding onto the bench beside him, as if they were still that couple, who crowded onto a bench together when there was a perfectly good seat across the table. But that wasn't who they were anymore and after a second, she sat down across from him.

"I'm sorry your road trip was ruined," she said, picking at the sleeve of her coat. "But at least you'll be able to have Christmas at home. Your mom will be happy."

Small talk. She wanted to engage him in small talk when it was all he could do to sit there and maintain the façade of humanity. He looked out the window, because the soft shine of her hair was unnervingly mesmerizing.

"Scott - -?" She reached across the table, her fingers grazing the back of his hand. Concerned about her friend. Her _friend_. When all he could think about with her scent in his nostrils and the feel of her skin on his skin, was sex. Hot and dirty. In the backseat of a car, a blanket in the woods, in her bed, on the floor beside it in a tangle of blankets and pillows, her nails raking his skin, her mouth driving him past the point of sanity - -

"So I got us egg McMuffins." A tray laden with wax paper wrapped breakfast sandwiches was plopped down onto the table a moment before Stiles scooted into the seat beside him.

Scott blinked, drawing in a long, trembling breath, afraid almost to look up at Allison in fear she might somehow sense the incredibly uncomfortable erection that was straining at his jeans. Thank God for the oversized jacket.

Isaac sat down next to Allison, another food-laden tray in hand. He and Stiles must have thought they were feeding an army. Regardless of the empty rumbling in his stomach, Scott didn't think he could deal with food. The soda though, he took, while Stiles and Isaac were tearing into the bounty. Allison nibbled on a McMuffin, staring at him with that furrow between her brow until he couldn't stand it any longer and pulled out the pill bottle.

"What's that?" Stiles turned Scott's hand so he could see the bottle. "Where'd you get that?"

"Deaton," Scott said.

Stiles looked between Scott and Allison, putting things together in his head.

"Okay. What is it exactly? I'm all for you popping something to take the edge off, but I've got a thing about knowing what medications go into my body."

"It's not your body," Isaac pointed out between mouthfuls of breakfast sandwich, earning a glare from Stiles.

"I trust Deaton," Scott shrugged and popped the cap.

There were six little white pills inside.

"He said to take them all," Allison said.

"Yeah, I don't know - -" Stiles was staring at the pills uncertainly.

Scott made the issue mute by popping the lot of them in his mouth and chasing them down with a long swig of soda. Done was done.

He got a look from Stiles for it, before Stiles shrugged and went back to his sandwich with a muttered. "Idiot. I guess it can't be worse than a needle full of wolfsbane."

"Or getting shot by your best friend. Twice," Scott muttered back.

"Stiles shot you?" Allison stared between them, wide-eyed.

"It was an accident," Stiles declared. "And you're walking around to complain about it, so shut up."

By the time Stiles and Isaac had finished off their respective trays of food, Scott was starting to feel a little numb. This wonderful buffer that dulled all his senses. He couldn't smell Allison, or the scent of cooking foods or too many bodies in the small space of the restaurant. Stiles was talking, but his words were mangled and seemed to be coming at him through layers and layers of insulation.

He figured out he was talking to him after the second or third time Stiles nudged him, then it took him a moment to focus on his face and his mouth enough to get the gist of the words coming out of it.

"Dude - - you okay?"

Scott just stared, not quite comprehending the question.

"He's wasted," Isaac commented.

"We should go. Now." That was Allison, pushing Isaac to scoot out from the bench.

He could walk. Barely. Directional control was becoming a problem. Stiles was on one side of him, Isaac on the other and still it was a swaying, meandering trip across the parking lot to the SUV.

"Oh - - crap - -" They were almost there when his legs gave out. Isaac's arm clamping around his waist kept him from crumpling on the pavement.

"What the hell did he give him?" Stiles was complaining.

But Scott didn't care. The edges folding in around his vision weren't red, they were white and soft. The lethargy in his body chased out the burning agitation of the wolfsbane, chased out the lingering aches and pains. He was half aware of Isaac bodily lifting him into the backseat of the SUV, and then he wasn't aware of anything at all.

And that was a good thing.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Scott was out like the proverbial light. Just dead to the world from whatever Deaton had slipped him via that little bottle of pills Allison had delivered for him. And yeah, maybe it was for the best, because Scott's hold on control had been slipping, but still, seeing him go down like that, had set Stiles' already frayed nerves on edge. Maybe he was just jumpy from twelve hours of running for his life - - maybe feeling just a little over protective having seen Scott take one too many injuries over that hectic time span. And most of those incurred trying to protect _him_. Which was sort of a kick to the balls of masculine pride - - but well, the deck _had_ sort of been stacked against a normal, non-werewolfy, seventeen year old kid.

Allison beat him to the back seat, slipping in with Scott before he could get to the door, which left him scowling at Isaac, and Isaac fumbling to catch the keys Allison tossed him through the open window. To his credit, Isaac didn't look particularly upset over a girl he was maybe sorta making out with scrambling to the side of her ex. To be honest, Stiles was probably more annoyed. But it was hard to hold onto annoyance with people who'd up and hauled ass three hundred miles at the ass crack of morning when you called for help. It was more exhaustion and after the fact jitters that was making him surly.

He settled into the passenger seat as Isaac pulled out of the gas station parking lot, able to sit back and let himself relax for the first time in forever.

"You think they're gonna be okay?"

"Of course they are." Allison sounded as if there were no doubt, her confidence in her father unshakable. But then she hadn't been running around with guys with assault weapons and monsters on her trail all night. Stiles figured he had a right to be a little paranoid.

"They have a lot of guns."

"My dad has a lot of guns. And your dad has back up on the way. They'll be all right. Stop worrying. My father says Dupont's business relies on the expectation of privacy for his customers - - that he'll back off at the threat of exposure that a full on police raid to his compound will bring. He'll probably have cleared out before they even get there."

"Yeah? Your dad also said he was relentless and didn't give up hunts once he'd started."

He looked back at her when she didn't respond right away. She gave him a shrug and half a smile. "He doesn't normally hunt humans and my father says he generally leaves wolves to - - other hunters."

"Argent type hunters, you mean?" Isaac tossed over his shoulder.

"Yes."

"Except for when he doesn't."

Stiles chewed on his knuckle, tapping a foot nervously on the floorboard until Isaac turned an annoyed look his way and commented. "I could break that for you, if it's causing you problems."

Stiles glared back. "I'm nervous, okay. Some of us get nervous over life and death situations and my dad's out there. And what the hell did Deaton give Scott, anyway? Is he supposed to be this out of it?" He twisted over the back of his seat to look back at Scott. He was slumped against the door and Allison had taken a blanket and made a cushion between his head and the glass.

"Better knocked out than trying to rip our throats out," Isaac shrugged.

"Yeah? He was holding on pretty well." Stiles defended Scott's grip on humanity.

"I'm just saying. If it were me, I'd have torn you to shreds and still be going."

"You're not Scott."

"No," Isaac agreed.

"He's okay, Stiles." Allison said. She traced the edges of the slashes in Scott's jacket, frowning. There was a _lot_ of dried blood staining the material.

"Those are from the vanago thing," Stiles informed her. "The second one by the way, that attacked us, in case I forgot to mention."

"You didn't," she said dryly, moving her hand to graze the half dozen or so bloody rips scattered across the thigh of Scott's jeans. She looked up at Stiles questioningly.

"Yeah, he did that to himself."

"Pain's the best way to bring yourself back from the edge," Isaac remarked with the tone of someone in the know. "Sometimes the only way."

There wasn't much he could think to say to that. He slouched deeper into his seat, staring at the side view mirror. There was just traffic. A lot of bland, unthreatening traffic.

The weariness rushed up without even the benefit of drugs and he closed his eyes, figuring he had a werewolf at the wheel and a hunter - - the good type of hunter - - in the back, so allowing himself a few minutes of dozing wouldn't be pushing his luck.

The clock on the dash read 8:40 when he shut his eyes - - when he opened them again - - it read 11:36 and they were creeping along, stuck behind what looked like a pretty long backup of traffic.

"How close are we to home?" He rotated his neck, trying to work out a kink three hours sleeping in a car seat had developed.

"If it weren't for this mess, about a half hour," Isaac had one hand on the wheel, the other idly scratching an itch behind his ear.

Stiles twisted in his seat and saw he wasn't the only one who'd been lulled asleep by the drive. Allison slumped against Scott, her head on his shoulder, as dead to the world as he was. Her hand lay strategically in a place, where, if Scott had been conscious, he'd have been pretty enthused about.

Stiles cast a glance at Isaac, who was humming sort of tunelessly along to some classic rock song on the radio, either not concerned, or oblivious to the fact. Oblivious to a lot of things, if Stiles were any judge and Stiles liked to think he was.

He drummed his fingers on the armrest, going over the pros and cons of getting his hands dirty with something that Scott was trying to pretend wasn't really eating at him. Scott would be appalled, of course - - but then Scott was presently sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged - - so he didn't get a vote. And all the pussyfooting around the subject, and the heartfelt 'I just want her to be happy's' and 'it's not my business what she does' - - _or who_ - - were starting to grate on Stiles' last nerve. At least he was honest with himself when he occasionally speculated about how awesome it would be if Aidan just happened to get flattened by a falling meteorite. Or a runaway train. Or accidentally fell into a giant, overgrown-werewolf-sized meat grinder. And he hadn't even done more than fantasize about dating Lydia.

"So are you and Allison doing it?"

"What?" Isaac cast him a wary look.

"You know bumping uglies, doing the horizontal tango, whatever the kids call it nowadays."

"Yeah, _the kids_ don't call it that - - and what the hell business is it of yours?" Isaac said, low voiced, casting a look over his shoulder. A guilty look, Stiles was certain.

"Its not _technically_ my business. It's kind of his - - and well, he's sorta my business - - and dating a friend's ex without clearing it is sort of a shitty thing to do."

"We're not dating. Exactly." Isaac got a thinking furrow between his brow.

"Yeah? Just macking on each other outside the school?"

"What? And I _did_ ask. Sort of."

Stiles lifted a dubious brow.

"Dude, if you asked, you were real subtle about it and Scott's not so good at picking up on subtlety. Then again, you're not so big on subtlety yourself so I gotta wonder if either one of you knew what the hell the other was talking about."

Isaac cast him a glower, opened his mouth - - then shut it - - maybe not so sure himself anymore. He decided to turn back and watch the road instead.

"So - - he's upset?" Isaac finally ventured, eyes flicking up to the rear view mirror.

Stiles rolled his eyes. There was Scott's sort of obviousness - - which a lot of the times happened because Scott had an awful lot of things on his mind and didn't multi-task as well as he thought he did - -and then there was Isaac who just didn't seem to focus outside his own narrow band of awareness. Isaac tended to act on impulse; a lot more of the here and now mentality of the wolf, than most of the other wolves Stiles knew and he wasn't even born into it. Maybe it was just Isaac being sort of broken. Maybe Isaac hadn't even realized he might be causing pain to somebody Stiles really didn't think he wanted to cause pain to when he and Allison had started whatever it was they were doing. God knew Isaac had a weird sort of thing for Scott. Maybe it was his beta reacting to Scott's alpha even before Scott had _become_ an alpha. Maybe it was just the abused kid in him responding to the real concern Scott had shown him. Who the hell knew? But the fact that he didn't think Scott might be a little bummed at the notion of Allison moving on with anyone - - much less a friend - - was ten kinds of clueless.

Scott and Stiles tended towards polar opposites in a lot of things. And grudges were one of the biggies. Scott was whole hell of a lot more forgiving than Stiles. A whole hell of a lot less likely to hold onto grudges and get pissy about them. But then that's what he had Stiles for. So Stiles was okay with giving Isaac a big dose of guilty conscience and letting him stew in it.

It was just a matter of contemplating the best way to inflict the most guilt on Isaac while having Scott the least amount of pissed off at him if word got back that Stiles had been fighting battles on his behalf that he didn't want fought.

"Is he upset? There was so much _'young love'_ in the air sophomore year I wanted to strangle him. He spent all summer and a good part of this year mooning over her. What do you think?"

Isaac was a worrier. It was in his nature and nothing Stiles could have actually spelled out could have come close to the things, left to his own devices, that Isaac might come up with in his own head.

Isaac glanced over his shoulder again, frowning. He sat there for a long while, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel, frown deepening while things brewed behind his eyes.

Stiles settled back into his seat, a little curl of satisfaction twitching at his lip from a job well done.

# # #

The traffic jam was due to construction work just before the Beacon Hills exit. It tacked an extra thirty minutes onto the trip, but as soon as they veered off onto the exit, it was smooth sailing, down the familiar roads of home. Stiles got a call from his dad, when they were almost to Scott's house, informing him that the Dupont Lodge had been abandoned when he, Argent and the eight state troopers that his dad had called to back them up, had arrived. The lodge had been locked up tight when they'd gotten there, and without a warrant, there was no going inside to ferret out possible stashes of the sort of weapons the state of California frowned upon the possession en masse of.

What they had found was Stiles' Jeep, a spattering of bullet holes in the corrugated wall of the garage it had been discovered in, and a few stray casings that had been missed in the no doubt hurried clean up by Dupont's men when they'd been clearing out. It wasn't much to go on to get a warrant, especially when the story the two principal witnesses might tell, should they be brought in to give a statement, would be viewed with considerable skepticism by any upstanding, right minded law official.

Allison was awake by the time they pulled into Scott's driveway. It being the middle of the day and there being at least one next door neighbor presently outside in process of putting up tacky holiday yard decorations, she and Stiles spent a few precious minutes discussing the most covert way of getting an unconscious Scott into the house without raising eyebrows.

Isaac got tired of their back and forth after about two minutes and just got out, hauled Scott over his shoulder fireman style and stomped towards the back door. Stiles and Allison hurriedly got out and scurried after him, Stiles taking the time to wave to the gaping next-door neighbor and say on the fly.

"It was the eggnog. He can't handle his booze. You know those holiday parties."

The neighbor kept staring and Stiles figured he'd cemented Scott's reputation as a teenaged alcoholic. He'd thank him for it later, he was sure.

Scott's mom opened the door before they got there, the sort of wide-eyed dismay on her face that you might expect upon seeing her kid being hauled towards the house like a sack of potatoes.

"Oh my God," she said. She waved Isaac in, trying to get her hands on Scott and ascertain the extent of his damage.

"What happened? Your father called and said the two of you were all right?" She took a moment to fix Stiles with a worried look.

"Its drugs," Stiles said and got an even wider-eyed look for his troubles.

"He's fine," Allison pushed past him. "Dr. Deaton thought it might be best if he were sedated until the wolfsbane worked its way out of his system."

"Wolfsbane!?"

"Yeah," Stiles added. "He only got shot a couple of times, but they were through and throughs. The broken ribs and the slashes were taking longer - - but that's because he was concentrating on not killing me - - sooo he should be better now - - what with the drugs and all - -"

Stiles trailed off, the expression on her face suggesting their explanations weren't helping her mental state. But she was a professional when it came to dealing with life and death situations and she'd gotten to the point where a little werewolf drama only threw her off her game momentarily. She took a breath, stabbed a finger at the stairs leading to the second floor and took charge.

"Isaac, take him upstairs to his bedroom. Have either one of you called your fathers to let them know you're here safe?"

She was on Isaac's heels as she asked. Allison and Stiles trailed after.

"Yes ma'am," Allison said. "They know."

If Melissa McCall's expression had been rightfully concerned at the sight of an unconscious son, it got downright horrified when Isaac dumped him on the bed and she got a good look at all the blood on the front of his clothing.

"Oh my - -" she stopped mid exclamation and gave Stiles a look, as if he might be primarily responsible for the gore. "Your father said you'd run into trouble," she ground out. "But that you were both all right. That everything was fine. This does not look fine."

Her expression was a little frightening and generally Scott's mom didn't do intimidating well. The last time she'd given him that look, they'd been eleven and he'd broken Scott's nose when they'd been faux sword fighting with sticks and he'd gotten in an unexpectedly good hit. She hadn't let them see each other for a week and it had been hell.

"It looks worse than it is. Now. Not all that blood is his." He offered a little weakly, even though most of it probably was.

She clenched her fists, took a breath and waved him out of the way. She ran into as much trouble as Scott had, getting the zipper of the coat down in her efforts to see for herself just how much the wounds that had leaked all that blood had closed.

She cursed under her breath when it snagged, just the hint of a tremor in her hands giving away how very, very shaken she was.

"Can one of you get me a pair of scissors? The zipper's stuck - - "

Stiles was scrambling to Scott's desk for the requested scissors, when Isaac, who seemed pretty good at stepping up and solving problems when delicacy wasn't an issue, just leaned down and used a little werewolf strength to rip the jacket open. Which revealed a lot of blood covered skin, but not much in the way of wounds. Four hours of drug induced sleep had gone a long ways to allowing Scott to heal.

She splayed her hand on his chest, where there were the faintest traces of mostly healed gouges under the red of dried blood and sat there, breathing in relief, while Scott's chest rose and fell under her fingers with the steady rhythm of his own breath.

"Okay," she said, that little trace of hysteria that had been skirting the edge of her voice before banished now that she'd seen for herself that Scott's guts weren't spilling out. "Stiles, how much of the blood on your shirt is yours? Are you hurt?"

"Um," he held up the arm Jan Dupont had cut. If the shirt hadn't been dark, the blood would have been a lot more obvious. "Just a little slice. But it was stitched up."

"By who?"

"Actually, the bitch who cut me - -"

Melissa lifted a brow, but Stiles figured he'd related all the terrible stories to her that she was capable of hearing at the moment, so he just sort of shrugged and clamped a hand over the bandaged place on his arm.

"I'll take a look at it in a bit. For now, all of you go downstairs. Get something to eat. For God's sake, wash up a little, Stiles."

Which he did, in the washroom down the hall while Isaac and Allison retreated downstairs. The cut under the bandage throbbed a little, and the skin of his arm was warm to the touch. All he needed was some sort of infection or a case of tetanus from an unclean blade or god knew what sort of bacteria he might have picked up tromping through the woods all damned night. How unfair would it be if Scott got shot, stabbed, slashed ten ways to Sunday, bashed up to the point where bones broke and he healed without a hitch, while _he_ got one little slice to the arm that led to some exotic, fatal blood infection that killed him slowly and gruesomely. He stood there, gripping the sink, staring at his bruised, scratched reflection in the mirror while dread scenarios of his painful demise whirled around inside his head.

His reflection stared back, lifting a dubious brow at the utter ridiculousness of working himself into a panic over the ramifications of a slice in the arm getting a little infected when he'd just escaped a bloodthirsty, supernatural monster bear from hell and a gaggle full of gun toting assholes out to literally murder him.

_Get a grip_, he suggested to himself. _Because you're the luckiest bastard alive_.

"Stiles?" Scott's mom stood in the half open doorway, her brown eyes fixed on the bloodstained bandage on his arm. She still had on scrubs, like she'd maybe been on her way to work when she'd gotten the call from his dad that the '_kids_' had gotten themselves into trouble. It was one sort of strain to actually experience the 'trouble' in question, and another entirely to have to sit idly by, helpless to do anything but wait for a call. He'd been on both ends of that equation and neither one were pleasant to experience.

"Let me take a look at that," she peeled the bandage off, her hands steady and confident. He looked at it once, quickly, before his stomach fluttered and he looked away.

"It's a little infected. And its filthy," she said, turning on the tap and gently blotting the stitched up gash with warm, soapy water. He looked again, saw pink puffy edges of the slice around the little metallic staples, a little bit of oozing puss from one section and his stomach didn't just flutter, it lurched up into his throat and obstructed the flow of blood to his head. He had to sit down, or he was going to fall down, and he did so on the edge of the tub.

She gave him a look and a wry, tired smile. "Its not that bad. We'll get you an antibiotic and you'll be fine."

"Great. Thanks." He propped his wrist on the sink and his head on his arm while she smeared some ointment from the medicine cabinet on the wound and then rebandaged it.

"What happened?" she asked quietly, voice a little tense, like she really, deep down didn't want to know the grisly details.

"We were in the wrong place at the wrong time," he shrugged. "Really, really wrong time. We ran into this guy who hunts monsters and things sort of went to hell."

"Hunts - - _monsters_ - - like Chris Argent?" She said the word monster like it left a bad taste in her mouth.

"No. Not like him. This guy - - he does it for the thrill. Or for money."

"And he was _hunting_ you and Scott?" Her hands were very still on his arm.

"Well, mostly Scott. They were just gonna kill me, probably." Which maybe wasn't the best clarification for him to have made, because her eyes widened for a moment in dismay, before she drew a shuddery breath.

She patted his arm and said softly. "Okay. Okay, then."

But she had a look in her eyes that maybe hinted she was considering not letting Scott out of the house again. Maybe thinking about starting up a regiment of home schooling for the remainder of his high school years.

"We did okay, y'know? All things considered."

She let out a hiccup of a laugh, then waved him up, and out of the bathroom. "Go downstairs. Make a sandwich, you look like you need it."


End file.
